


this is not a drive by

by plutos



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Kid Fic, M/M, Podfic Available, Really long sentences, Slow Build, abuse of commas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:46:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1568312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutos/pseuds/plutos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"God, he can’t stop smiling, and it must be infectious because a slow grin is stretching across Steve’s face, and now <em>he’s</em> the one looking at Bucky from up under his eyelashes and asking, “How have we not met before?”</p><p>And, really, that’s the question isn’t it."</p><p>Otherwise known as: The Bucky Barnes Hot Dad AU or The One Where Steve Crashes All Of Bucky's Dates Without Really Trying</p><p>[Now with an amazing <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/4335269">podfic</a>!]</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is not a drive by

**Author's Note:**

> oh my god. i don't even know where to start, holy shit idk what even happened  
> endless amounts of thanks to the folks over on twitter who encouraged this from the beginning, but especially the lovely charlotte who really was the one to kick my ass into gear with this fic  
> everything has been extensively googled: i now know some of what it's like to be a single father and also most of the layout of brooklyn. if i got anything wrong though, keep in mind that i am incredibly english and have only been to america once (you have no idea how weird it was to type 'fall' instead of 'autumn')  
> so basically, enjoy this shit show of a fic- it's like a car crash i just couldn't look away from. comments are SUPER appreciated, go wild

After staring at the kid for a good long while, Bucky drags his hand through his hair (his good hand, his _only_ hand, jesus) and reconsiders his plans for life after the army. To be quite honest, he didn’t have much of a plan in the first place but whatever vague and uncertain ideas he had had about his future sure as hell didn’t include a kid, especially not this kid, sat happily grabbing at his toes in front of him. A little boy named Peter with wild brown hair and soft brown eyes, sat on his kitchen counter in a Spiderman onesie, kicking his feet and smacking his gummy lips together.

He can’t be more than nine months old: _can’t be_ because the last time Bucky got some was before his deployment and that was eighteen months ago, which automatically cuts out nine months for pregnancy, and he’s only been home a whopping two days before the kid got presented to him by his confused but kind-eyed upstairs neighbor Dr. Banner who told him he was just sat on the doorstep. And now he’s sat on his kitchen counter. _Shit_ , he should take the kid off the damn counter, kids shouldn’t sit on counters, should they?

How the fuck does he even move him when he’s only got _one arm_?

He steps forward and scoops Peter up with a hand under his bum and adjusts him so he’s sitting a little more securely than just dangling awkwardly across Bucky’s chest. Paying only a small amount of attention to the babbling murmuring noises Peter’s making insistently in his ear, he tries to decide where it’s safe in his apartment to put him.

His apartment is small, but comfortable, with the living room and kitchen all in one large open space, a bedroom with an adjoining bathroom, and a small office tucked away just behind where the tv sits. Really, the only reason it’s clean is because Dr. Banner has been kind enough to look after the place while he’s been gone. He decides the sofa is probably the safest place for a small child, so he plops Peter down in the centre of the cushions and watches him squirm happily for a few moments before turning to pick up his phone. Natasha is probably the only person in the world who can help him with this.

.

Nat shows up twenty minutes later, after he blurts “so I have a kid,” pathetically over the phone and she hangs up on him straight away, so he’s been alternately pacing and staring at the little boy sat on his sofa. He’s small and pudgy, with little fingers and little toes, and when Bucky held him he was warm and smelled like that clean baby smell he remembers from when some of his friends from his troop had kids and for whatever reason shoved them in Bucky’s arms. Admittedly it was much easier to hold a child with two arms than one but that didn’t make it any less goddamn overwhelming. This child had settled into his body easily, like he was already comfortable and happy. Bucky’s not exactly known for making people feel comfortable and happy.

Maybe he should get this kid’s head checked out, just in case.

Letting Nat into his apartment really only ends up with the two of them staring at Peter together, Bucky with his good arm wrapped around his waist and Nat with her hands on her hips. She hasn’t said anything to him despite not seeing him since he spent his two weeks leave practically comatose on her and Clint’s sofa. He had crashed so hard he hardly even left the apartment, the relief of not having his fingers curled around a trigger so freeing he almost felt bereft of it. Now he’s got no arm to properly hold a gun, his weapon somehow replaced with a little boy. A life in his hands rather than a killing machine. _Jesus H Christ_.

“So where’s this super special Stark-designed bionic arm they gifted you with?” she asks, already heading to the bedroom where she knows he’s dumped it. He rolls his eyes and follows her, glancing back at Peter to check he’s okay. He’s happily chewing on his fists, gurgling around his stubby fingers, and Bucky blinks at him a bit before following Nat into his bedroom. She’s poking at his arm, deliberately not saying anything until Bucky huffs and snatches the arm out of her hands, fitting it into place at his empty shoulder and rotating it quickly. It settles and clicks, makes a few whirring noises he’s pretty sure Stark put in for effect rather than use, then he lifts the hand and waggles the fingers at Nat.

It was pretty much the dumbest thing he’d ever heard when they told him they were getting Stark Industries to manufacture prosthetic specifically for him, but he’s gotta admit: it’s pretty cool. It responds to his every whim and if he didn’t hate the fact that he needs it in the first place he’d probably wear it all the time. It’s at least going to be useful in the future now he has a kid and all, he thinks absently, flexing the fingers.

His knees buckle a little at that stray thought. He has a _kid_ now, someone he’s got to feed and bathe and entertain, someone he has to look after 24/7. There’s no time for the weeks of wallowing in his own misery he had planned, he’s gotta get his shit together and get it together fast. He looks helplessly at Nat. She immediately grabs his hand, drags him back out of the bedroom and pushes him down onto the sofa, picking Peter up and placing him in his lap.

His arms wrap automatically around Peter’s middle, feeling his soft breathing, and starts breathing in time with him. He remembers a kid who used to get panic attacks in training and how his buddies would press a hand to his chest, force him to breathe in time with them so he calmed down. Bucky’s brain is a little all over the place at the moment, jumping from wondering if the fabric of his henley is too scratchy on Peter’s soft skin to hysterical thoughts of foisting the boy off on Nat and Clint.

But Peter’s wriggled enough around that now he’s facing Bucky, peering up at him with large brown eyes and Bucky figures it’s his due considering he stared at Pete for a good twenty minutes while waiting for Nat to knock on the door. He scans Pete’s face for similarities to himself, sees a familiar bow to his pink lips and a little dip in his chin that’s like Bucky’s own. His hair is lighter than Bucky’s, eyes brown rather than blue, his ears stick out a little, and there’s a dimple on his left cheek that’s not present on Bucky’s, but other than that he actually looks like his son. His son looks like him. They look related. Bucky’s a _father_.

And, well, Bucky’s never actually had a father himself. He was born in Indiana and grew up in Virginia, on an army base that was haunted with the ghost of a dad he never got to know. To be honest, he wouldn’t wish that on any child growing up. The absence of a parent festered like a wound, neglected and dangerous. Bucky never did finish high school, dropped out and joined the army as soon as he could, shipped overseas like it could put some distance between him and his demons. And no, it didn’t help him one bit, not even a single iota, because Bucky looks at this kid and sees himself. He refuses to let what happened to him happen to his son.

Nat presses her palm to his shoulder and sinks down on the sofa next to him. He glances at her briefly, finds her to be studying him and Pete with the calculating gaze of a woman with a plan, and decides to leave her to it. He bounces Pete a little on his knees, listens to the small squeal of surprised joy Pete lets out, and feels the beginnings of a smile turn the corners of his mouth.

“Oh god,” he murmurs, the slick slide of cold reality hastening down his spine. “I don’t have a cot for him to sleep in.” He turns to look at Nat with something akin to panic in his eyes, his voice pitched high and reedy. “Oh my god, I don’t have any food, I don’t have- have money enough for the both of us, oh god I don’t have clothes or diapers or anythin’ to cover the sockets in the house, I don’t have a clue what I’m doin’, I don’t-” Nat interrupts his babbling by slapping her palm down against his mouth, effectively cutting off his panic attack before it became full blown.

“Calm the fuck down James,” she says, the line of her mouth hard and unyielding but her eyes soft and understanding, “we’ll figure this out.”

.

And they do.

Nat disappears with Bucky’s credit card after seeing how completely useless he is right now and comes back two hours later armed with bags upon endless bags of baby stuff, Clint and Dr. Banner in tow. She pulls out a soft square mat and puts it on the floor near the sofa, picks Pete up and places him on it on his stomach, where he pushes his little hands into the fabric and is suitably entertained for a while at least.

That done, Clint starts unpacking the rest of the bags, getting started placing safety blockers on all the sharp corners imaginable in Bucky’s apartment while Banner stocks his fridge and Nat starts dragging out flat pack boxes that have pictures of various pieces of furniture pasted on them. This spurs Bucky into action from his place glued to the sofa watching calm chaos unfold around him, and he rummages until he finds his toolbox and gets to setting up a cot for Peter to sleep in. He can see Nat assembling a small chest of drawers beside him and, once he’s finished wrapping the entire apartment in bubble wrap, Clint joins them and starts on the changer, his side pressed subtly against Nat’s own.

Banner finishes up in the kitchen and ambles over to play with Pete, rummaging around in more of Nat’s bags to find some colourful and noisy toys to dangle in front of him. Pete seems happy enough, gurgling and grabbing at Banner’s shirt, so Bucky leaves them to it, working with Clint and Nat to find space to shove all this unexpected stuff in his apartment.

They realise pretty quickly that the only place for it is the office, so they remove the bookshelves and storage boxes to make room for Pete’s cot and his drawers, his changer stashed in the corner for ease of access. They put all the bookshelves back up, higher this time, and get about half of the boxes back in there before the room becomes too claustrophobic to move around in properly.

When they’ve finished in the office, or what is now Peter’s room Bucky guesses, they shove all the cardboard and leftover debris into the recycling bins outside the block and order some well deserved pizza. While they wait for the delivery boy to show up, Bucky collapses on the floor next to Pete and watches him play with Banner, tugging on his hair and getting his fingerprints all over Banner’s glasses. Nat’s doing something on her phone in the kitchen, so it’s Clint who sits down beside him and passes over a can of cool beer, condensation running down the side and over Bucky’s fingers. He breaks the seal and raises it in Clint’s direction, taking a swig and letting it run cold down his throat.

“That’s some cute kid you got there Barnes,” Clint comments, watching Pete reach for Banner’s nose and topple harmlessly over.

“You want him, pal?”

Clint snorts. “Nah, you’re alright,” he says, before snorting again. “You’re a daddy now,” he smirks and waggles his eyebrows and Bucky smacks the can against the side of his smug face, making him laugh even harder. It feels good, it feels normal, even as he hears Peter making high pitched noises of delight as Banner picks him up under his arms and blows a raspberry against his stomach.

He could get used to this.

.

The first few weeks are hectic, and although Pete’s old enough to sleep through most nights without making a peep, he’s still a handful to manage during the day. Bucky learns to change a diaper in under ninety seconds with both hands, under three minutes with one. He learns which foods are Good in Peter’s book and which ones will end up all over the counters and floor. He struggles his way through dressing Peter every morning, bathing him every night, combing his hair, keeping him smiling and happy and unharmed.

There are bad days. Days where Peter cries and cries for no real reason Bucky can discern, wet sobs that come from the chest and fat tears that roll down his little cheeks. There are days where he calls Nat in a panic that he just can’t do this, until she offers to come around so he can get out of the house, only to feel reluctance to leave his son alone with someone else. There are days when he doesn’t shave, doesn’t bother fitting his arm to his shoulder, doesn’t move from his bed until he absolutely has to. There are bad days, but they’re few and far between, and Bucky all but forgets about them whenever he feels the tightness in his chest when he makes his son laugh, a squeeze around his heart that tells him he loves his boy, and his boy loves him back.

So the weeks turn into months and soon enough it’s Peter’s first birthday, a crisp February breeze in the air. New York is wearing coats and scarves in this weather, gloves and mittens on fingers to keep them warm when feeding the ducks in the park. Bucky likes taking the short walk to the corner store to stock up on bread and milk and bananas with Pete on his shoulders, his hands buried in the hair Bucky’s decided to grow out and his little feet kicking down on Bucky’s biceps. It’s a good thing he can only actually bruise on one arm, or he thinks he’d be wincing a lot more than he already does.

Peter’s moved onto solid foods, and Bucky feeds him so much fruit and veg that the regulars at the shop must think he’s vegetarian. He’s not; he just did a fuck tonne of googling around when Peter first got dumped on him and learned pretty sharpish what a nine month old child can and cannot eat. He’s been keeping a close eye out for allergies, but nothing’s cropped up so far, so he keeps feeding Pete peas and spinach and sweet potatoes, oranges and squash and roasted red peppers, gives him rice and pasta and little bits of chicken, fish, beans, and eggs. He gets as creative as he can: swirls peaches into yoghurt, adds pears to pancakes, asparagus to mash. He lets Pete set the pace and choose what he wants to eat; if he doesn’t want to eat cantaloupe then Bucky won’t force him. He figures at this age Pete won’t really care what he eats as he’s done in a few bites anyway. Babies stomachs are tiny, and Pete is pretty much full after a few spoonfuls.

It’s his first birthday, so Bucky’s making his favourite of grilled cheese and avocado toast while he hums along to the radio in the kitchen. He can hear Pete smacking his fists inelegantly on the high chair behind him, both of them still in their pyjamas despite it being nearly midday. He wonders what it’d be like if he didn’t know when Peter’s birthday fell: just pick a random day and stick to it? Thank god the girl left him a note along with Pete as a way of explanation. _Peter Benjamin, born February 22nd, likes Spiderman and drinks formula._

He’s pondered in the past how she knew to leave Pete with him when she did, but he figures she’d seen his picture in the paper the day he came back from war and seized her chance then. There’d been a big hoo-hah about his return: a seasoned veteran risking his life for his country and losing a limb in the process. She must have recognised him and- well, he doesn’t know really. Why does a woman give up her kids? He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t have any way of finding out, really, considering he can barely remember her name, fading with two years full of war and unexpected fatherhood crammed between them.

But she gave him Pete, gave him this morning with the winter sun high and bright in the sky and his son kicking up a fuss about being hungry, gave him the chance to see his kid grow right in front of his eyes.

.

Peter crawls around like a child possessed for the first months Bucky has him, climbing up on the sofa and wandering off every time Bucky turns his back. He spends a good hour every day chasing Pete around and scooping him up, suddenly overwhelmingly glad that Clint had put safety blockers on every single sharp object and corner around the flat. When Pete gets hurt he cries like a wild thing, wails that hurt Bucky’s ears and no amount of gentle words can soothe. He usually tires himself out after about half an hour, his sobs turning to hiccups, and allows Bucky to hold him and stroke his soft hair, press a kiss to the crown of his head and clean up the scrape.

Dr. Banner from upstairs becomes Pete’s primary physician, for convenience more than anything, but it helps that Bucky trusts him and Peter adores him, squealing every time he sees Bruce and grabbing for his nose. He’s never seen Bruce bring anyone home with him, never heard more than one set of footsteps echo around upstairs, and so he quietly begins to invite him around more and more often until he eventually leaves a key to the front door on the kitchen table that disappears by the time Bucky gets back from changing Peter.

The sweet smile he gets is worth the self-control he’s had to muster not to just slam the key into Bruce’s palm and let him have at it.

With Bruce’s careful interventions, Bucky learns how to be less paranoid about his kid catching the measles and dying in the two hours he leaves him with Nat and Clint at the weekends. Peter’s exuberant crawling turns into pulling himself up the side of the kitchen chairs turns into his very first steps. The look on Pete’s face when he successfully reaches Bucky’s outstretched arms will be one he’ll never forget, catching his son around the waist and swinging him in the air, Peter’s grin and peals of laughter lighting up the room far brighter than the mid-morning sun streaming through the window ever has or ever will do.

Forays in walking are followed by Peter’s first words, strings of babbling that suddenly turn into him pointing at things and naming them, sat in Nat’s lap while tugging at her hair and announcing “red”, staring out the window and shouting “moon!” excitedly when the clouds clear enough to see the night sky, settling onto Bucky’s hip as they walk through Downtown Brooklyn and yelling “bike”, “hat”, “hot dogs”, until Bucky feels like he’s gonna pull his own hair out if he doesn’t get called Daddy soon, _seriously_.

Clint chokes on his beer and nearly falls off his chair when Bucky tells him this. Bucky glares at him, entirely unamused, until he catches his breath enough to actually be able to breathe again.

“Don’t you dare go turnin’ my son into some sexual object, don’t think I won’t sock you,” he says, still glaring at Clint over the rim of the beer bottle.

They’re occupying a booth in the back corner of a bar not far from Bucky’s apartment, close enough to get back in under five minutes if he really sprints, but far enough that he feels like he’s got an actual life outside having a kid.

As it turns out, having a life outside of having a kid is really fucking hard.

“So buddy,” Clint starts after polishing off his third beer of the night. Bucky’s still nursing his first and feels envious for a few seconds, before thinking of what a fucking mess it would be if he came home drunk and stumbling. Nat would murder him in his sleep, for sure this time. “My lady is of the opinion that you should start looking for a lady of your own.”

“Is this lady of yours five foot four with red hair? If so, kindly tell her to fuck off.”

Clint snorts and drags the back of his hand across his mouth, leaning backwards to slump further into the booth. “Seriously though-”

“Seriously nothing,” Bucky cuts in, drawling a little to get his point across, “I’m not in any position to be going out chasin’ skirt.”

“Doesn’t have to be skirt,” Clint replies. His eyebrows waggle and Bucky rolls his eyes so hard they actually hurt. He spends at least thirty percent of his time around Clint rolling his eyes, it’s gotta be detrimental to his health by now.

“That was one time and you know it,” he says, reaching out and swiping a few peanuts from the little bowl on the table. He’s hoping stuffing enough in his mouth will get the point across that he Does Not want to talk about this, but Clint leans forward, suddenly looking serious.

“Look, buddy, real life isn’t the army, there’s no convenient ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ when it comes to dating. You know no one gives a shit, right? We’re in New York City for christ's sake, if you can’t be out here then where the fuck can you?”

He’s lowered his voice but it’s still loud enough to make Bucky slightly uncomfortable.

“Look, _pal_ , it was _one time_ , and maybe I will do it again and maybe I won’t, but I’m not gonna until I say so, okay?” He shakes his head a little, downing the last of his beer and ignoring the look Clint shoots his way, and he knows his friend is not going to let this go.

“It’s whatever anyway,” he says later as they shrug on their jackets and leave the bar, stepping out into the crisp night air. “I have a kid now, there’s no time.”

He grins at Clint, lifts his good arm in goodbye, and starts the walk home. He ponders as he walks, breathing in clean air and scuffing his shoes along the curb. His mind goes back on his first boyfriend, a guy from Brooklyn who moved to his school and infected Bucky with an accent he can’t shake to this day, how he’d stuttered over telling Natasha about him because _jesus_ he liked how this guy’s shoulders looked in a tank top but also, _jesus_ he couldn’t believe he likes to think about another guy’s _shoulders_. But Nat was totally great about it. It was the other jerks in school who complete assholes to him, who made his life as near to hell as it got for a kid who grew up on an army base and therefore could throw a punch that broke a locker door off its hinges.

He was never really comfortable with that side of himself since then, avoided ever talking about it with Nat until he could fuck off with the army and have a legitimate reason why they couldn’t have a confrontation of his feelings. It’s not like he’s been a hundred percent chaste since then: he’s fucked guys and been fucked in turn, he’s just… not had any relationship with them. He sticks to women, and even then his relationships don’t last very long.

Lately he’s had a grand total of about zero time to think about this, what with Pete growing at an alarming rate and his availability for fucking severely impaired by how goddamn weird it is to think about sex when his fourteen month old son is scrambling around and getting under his feet, demanding his attention at all hours of the day.

When Peter finally calls him Daddy, Bucky doesn’t stop smiling for days. He convinces himself it’s not a big deal that there’s no one there to celebrate the moment with him.

.

Peter gets older and grows like a weed, working through clothing sizes like they’re going out of style. Bucky starts to feel the pinch around the same time as Pete turns two, his army compensation only stretching so far, and his habit of indulging his son’s obsession with Spiderman by buying him the entire animated series isn’t exactly covered by his bank account.

He’s been without a job for over a year now. He would say he considers being a father a full time job, but really it’s not. Ever since Pete became potty trained he’s gained so much independence that Bucky’s half worried he’ll move out and get married in the time it takes him to blink. It still takes up a lot of his time looking after him, but honestly Bucky’s left twiddling his thumbs a little.

He goes to Nat, who sets him up with a little grunt work for her firm. Nat is editor-in-chief for some big publishing firm in Manhattan, so she gets him to read a few manuscripts a week and tell her if they’re any good.

The majority of them really are not.

He reads the manuscripts while Pete sleeps, or eats, or is sitting six inches away from the tv watching Spiderman shoot webs at the bad guys. When he’s done reading that week’s batch, he creates a ‘No’ pile, a ‘Maybe With A Bit Of Work’ pile, and an ‘It’s Alright, I Guess’ pile which he hands over to Nat when she and Clint come round at the weekends to look after Peter.

He gets seriously sick of reading the same old teenybopper romance flicks where the girl pines after a guy who is a massive jerk to her, or mystery novels where the grand twist is that the room is locked from the inside, or tacky sci-fi books with women who wears skirts so short they couldn’t possibly be conducive to running from explosions or fixing up engines.

He enjoys the kiddie books though, and reads out the best ones to Pete as bed-time stories. Tall tales of pirates and mermaids, fairies and trolls, bears that get lost in the woods, and rabbits that throw tea parties. The ones that Peter enjoys the most go into a super special ‘If My Kid Likes It, Then Any Kid Will Like It’ pile that he happily hands over for Nat to peruse at her leisure.

Really though, reading manuscripts gets boring after a while, and so Bucky breaks out the red pen and starts circling punctuation that makes him cringe and writing a big, bold ‘ _NO_ ’ next to certain sentences, underlining it several times for emphasis. He figures no-one’s gonna actually take what he has to say seriously, so he gets as sarcastic and bitchy as he pleases, periodically scribbling ‘ _are you_ _fucking kidding me_ ’ and ‘ _is this even real English????_ ’ several times on the same manuscript.

So it’s a real shock when Nat gives him his stack one week and it includes a ‘script he’d put in the ‘Maybe With A Bit Of Work’ pile, a sticky note pasted on the front telling him his comments were taken on board, and would he give this another read and make more suggestions?

Suddenly, he has a client base built up of a range of different genre-writers who come to him when they need a good slap around the face and to get told that what they’re writing is absolute shit. Then they come back, get told that it’s marginally better, and have they considered making the main protagonists siblings instead of awkward, two-dimensional lovers? They leave satisfied, Bucky gains a few extra figures in his bank account, it’s a win-win.

He’s really happy, actually, with how all this has turned out. He gets to spend time with his kid and see his friends, he gets to pick and choose who he takes on for his services, and he actually enjoys the work, even if it does make him want to tear his hair out sometimes.

Which reminds him, he really needs to get a haircut, it’s starting to get so long it annoys him even when he sticks it up in a bun.

And thanks, Bruce, for teaching him how to do that.

.

Bucky loves living in Brooklyn. He’s never more than half an hour from anywhere he wants to go if he takes the train, from Prospect Park to Coney Island, but he likes living in Cobble Hill the best.

Nat and Clint live out in Dumbo, a gorgeous view of the Manhattan skyline visible from their high windows. But Bucky’s budget is a little tighter than theirs, so he lives in quiet Cobble Hill, filled with bookstores and Italian restaurants, sticks to the bars along Court St and Smith St, and takes the F train and short walk to reach Nat and Clint whenever he wants.

It suits him, he thinks, down to the ground. Dumbo is nice, sure, with the riverfront park and all the lovely tall buildings, but Bucky would rather raise his kid in a place with only twenty-two blocks and a bunch of family-run shops than somewhere packed full of rich kids and pretentious hipsters. He’d followed Nat here after his first year with the army, and hasn’t thought anywhere else as home since then.

He and Pete often take the ten minute walk down to Carroll Gardens and play in the parks there. Bucky actually goes so far as to join a sort of troupe of single parents who let their kids run wild on Saturday mornings. It’s here that Bucky starts to think about maybe sending Peter to preschool.

“Have you thought about it yet?” questions Mel, a beautiful brunette with the same button nose that her daughter, Charlie, has.

“I hadn’t really… I mean, is he old enough? He doesn’t seem old enough,” he stammers out, watching Pete pull out handfuls of grass and dump them in a pile near the sandbox, his little legs working overtime to get there fast enough.

“He’s at least two right?” Mel asks. She’s looking at him curiously. Bucky’ll be the first to put his (good) hand up and say it’s kinda uncommon for a guy his age and with his background (the dog tags hanging around get more glances than his prosthetic arm most days) to bring a kid to the park every Saturday for weeks running. He’s not bothered to put his arm in today, rather he’s just rolled up the sleeve and decided not to give a shit, but no one’s said anything, so he decides to breathe in the summer air and answer Mel’s questions.

“He’s nearer two and a half,” he replies, “but I reckon that’s too young, right?” He’s not exactly done much research in this area, the idea of sending Pete off to school seems so far away in the future that it doesn’t seem that important.

Mel is shaking her head, her lovely brown hair swishing across her shoulders. “My first went to preschool at two,” she says, smiling.

“Holy sh- sugar,” he says, reluctant to swear around young kids. “Now I aint passin’ judgement but don’t you think that’s maybe…” he waggles his hand, “jumping the gun a bit?”

Mel laughs. “My son was just as curious and clever as yours is at his age. Going to preschool has really benefited him, I think.”

She rummages around in her purse for a moment, and turns back with a flyer in her hand for some science school on Wyckoff Street.

“This is where we sent Nicky,” she hands him the leaflet, “you should check it out.” She smiles kindly at him, before calling her daughter over and taking her hand, getting ready to go.

“Thanks,” Bucky says absently, staring at the flyer.

“It’s no problem James,” she replies, before getting up off the bench and leading her daughter out the park. “Have a nice day!” she calls over her shoulder.

Bucky’s left with the flyer, a cheery pink sheet with little owls and and a tree made of hand prints embossed on the front. ‘Brooklyn Pre-School of Science’ is printed proudly in large letters, followed by pictures of grinning children with tambourines, magnifying glasses, cups of weird looking green stuff, wearing aprons and wielding rolling pins, a woman in a shirt proclaiming ‘science is cool!’ reading a book about rocks to a class, a group of kids out in the park pointing at woodlice. It looks like somewhere Bucky would not fit in.

But Peter would _thrive_.

He’s young, sure, but he loves watching documentary shows about polar bears and lizards and, unsurprisingly, spiders, loves to sit in front of Bang Goes the Theory and watch them blow up stuff for hours on end. Peter loves the stories Bucky reads to him about volcanoes, space adventures, and wacky scientists who wear long white lab coats and are surrounded by bubbling potions and tinctures. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine his kid loving every second of a school devoted to science.

He tucks the flyer in his back pocket and scoops Peter up from where he’s getting dangerously close to the Big Slide on the other side of the park. Peter squeals and giggles, kicking his feet in the air and yelling, “Daddy, Daddy, up! Up!” until Bucky drops to one knee and allows him to scramble until he’s sitting on his shoulders and pulling Bucky’s significantly shorter hair. He heaves himself up again, pretending to stagger and stumble to make Pete laugh, and sets home with Peter trying to reach up and touch the leaves on the trees the whole way back.

.

He doesn’t forget about the leaflet though, and it sits on his bedside table for some time before he decides to broach the subject with Bruce.

He figures Bruce is a pretty safe bet when it comes to the welfare of his kid, so he and Pete trek up the stairs and knock on Bruce’s door, Peter hammering his little fists on the wood and shouting ‘Brucey, Brucey!” until the man himself and his bedhead emerge and show them into the living room.

Peter immediately pounces on the toys Bruce keeps in the corner especially for him and gets lost in his own world in about a second flat. Bucky shakes his head fondly, following Bruce into the kitchen where he pushes his friend into a chair and makes them both strong cups of coffee. Bruce looks so thankful that it almost makes Bucky feel a little less guilty about waking him up at nine o'clock on a Sunday.

“So,” Bruce says after taking a large gulp of his coffee, wincing at how hot it is.

“Yeah, so, I’m thinkin’ of startin’ Pete at preschool,” Bucky blurts. He’s tracing patterns on the table with his good hand, the coffee cup sending warmth up across his face where he’s basically hiding from Bruce, avoiding his eye.

“I think that’s a good idea,” comes the calm reply. Bruce is blinking at him slowly, still sleepy and rumpled, but completely willing to listen to Bucky’s mild panic attack.

He lets out a long breath, then slides the pink leaflet across the table and watches Bruce pick it up, read it, and slide it across the table again.

“Looks good to me,” he says, rising and returning to the living room.

Bucky stares after him, bewildered, but willing to play along. He follows Bruce, sits heavily on the sofa and feels the cushions sink around him. They watch Pete play for a while, narrating a story to himself and waving his action figures in the air, pretending they’re having some kind of intergalactic picnic with several aliens.

“Do you think it’s too specific though?” he asks, immediately adding, “do you think he’s too _young_?”

“I think you’ve already decided what you’re going to do,” Bruce says neutrally. “You just want me to reassure you.” He looks directly at Bucky, the calm in his eyes showing his support and acceptance.

“You’re doing something that’s going to be good for him, and that’s nothing to worry about, James.”

Bucky sags in his relief, tipping his head back against the sofa and letting out a long breath. It’s like a weight he didn’t even know was there has been lifted from his shoulders, Bruce’s opinion meaning more to him than he expected.

They continue to sip their coffee’s, Peter making pew-pew noises in the background, and enjoy the morning together.

.

He goes to Nat next because, really, he wants backup options if this science school thing doesn’t work out. They sit down and google around for hours, trading back and forth reviews on yelp and recommendations on parenting websites. They settle on three more schools to look around: two regular preschools and another that’s similar to Mel’s science one. They all look nice, but looks aren’t everything, so Bucky books a tour for each, trekking out in the summer sun with Pete to have a look around.

The first school is immediately out when they refuse to allow Peter to have a look around himself. Bucky genuinely doesn’t understand it, but he muddles through the tour without Pete, having to call Clint to come pick him up and entertain him for an hour. Clint makes the short drive over, swings Peter into his arms and announces they’re going to the shooting range for the afternoon. Peter whoops, nattering animatedly about getting a bullseye, and Clint shoots Bucky a look that clearly says ‘what the fuck?’. Bucky shrugs in reply that he doesn’t know, but he’s certain that this school is not the one for them.

The next school is worse, and Bucky leaves immediately instead of politely sticking around and grimacing at rooms painted a cheerful yellow. The guy showing them around picks up Peter, bouncing him in his arms, and Pete bursts into tears like it’s hurting him to be in contact, pushing his hands against the guy’s suit and struggling wildly.

And the guy _doesn’t put him down_. He just keeps bouncing Peter and chatting to Bucky like nothing’s happening.

“Alright, no, give him here,” he mutters, and snatches Pete safely into his own arms, picks up his bag, and immediately leaves the room, not even bothering to say goodbye.

Now, some people would think it’s stupid, but Bucky trusts his son implicitly, and if Peter cries like his fingernails are being pulled off around the Director of the school, well. That school is not a place he wants his son to be.

The third school is actually pretty nice. He remembers the website had been a garish splash of bright colours that hurt both Bucky and Nat’s eyes, even though Nat had barely winced. It’s a bilingual school, with regular Spanish lessons and blocks dedicated to cooking, gardening, music, and even, confusingly, yoga.

He’s dragged Clint along with him, because after the disaster of the last schools he figured it would be best if he had someone with him so he didn’t punch anyone. The lady showing him around doesn’t make a comment, not about Clint pressing his hand to Bucky’s lower back to push him through the doors or about Bucky’s missing arm. He hadn’t put it on that morning, feeling a phantom ache he didn’t want to risk aggravating. It’s incredible, actually, how Stark had managed to make it so he could remove and replace the arm as he pleases, the freedom he feels having a _choice_ is amazing.

Clint’s holding Pete, who wriggles until Clint lets him down and allows him to run off, bee lining for the bookshelf on the other side of the room and picking up a book about cartoon dolphins playing in the sea. He brings it back, presents it to Bucky, and suddenly he realises it’s a book he’d helped edit, one he’d read to Peter after watching a documentary on sea wildlife. Peter had giggled and kicked his feet when the dolphins blew bubbles at each other, creating targets for their noses to hit, something Bucky knows they actually do in real life.

“Yeah pal,” he says, laughing a little, “I remember.” Peter grins at him, before running off and skidding on his knees to sit and ‘read’ the book by pointing at the pictures and making squeaking noises like a dolphin.

Clint’s laughing openly, rubbing a hand through his hair. The lady showing them around doesn’t smile though. Bucky notices this, and files it away for later.

It’s lovely overall, and they leave with smiles on their face and a reluctant Peter staring morosely over Clint’s shoulder, probably still wishing he could spend more time with the books.

The final school though, the science school, is fucking _insane_.

It’s out of this world, and Peter _adores_ it immediately. The lobby has huge glass windows where kids can press their noses to the glass and watch gecko’s wiggle about on the rocks and fish swim around their little coral reef. It’s a trial to convince Peter to move out of the lobby to start the tour, only a promise to come back at the end is enough to persuade him.

The woman showing them around, Darcy, laughs and says, “It’s always easy to tell which kids are the most into it,” gesturing for them to follow her. By ‘it’ Bucky assumes she means ‘science’.

Peter skips along beside her, stumbling over his own feet a little. He’s talking about how gecko’s probably use their tails for balance like birds and cats do, and she listens intently, mentioning that their tails can be used to wrap around things and hold on. Bucky trails behind them, bemused but happy, watching Pete come alive in this environment.

Darcy talks him through what they do at the school, the seasonal courses they run: ocean wildlife in the fall, a weather garden in the winter, body biology in the spring. There’s all sorts of smaller programmes that they run as well: Making Friends, Living in the Neighborhood, Urban Plants and Animals, Colour and Light, Music and Sound, Introduction to Reading and Writing, and Art classes that run later in the day. Bucky nods along as best as he can, absorbs the information to ramble to Nat, Clint, and Bruce later.

Darcy natters on for half the tour, but Bucky doesn’t mind. She seems lovely, even if she speaks so fast sometimes it’s hard to keep up and grips her thermos of coffee like it’s the only thing keeping her awake. Her nails are painted a startling shade of neon green.

“If you want,” she says, opening the door in front of her, “Peter can sit in on one of our summer classes for a bit and you can have a wander around? You look like you wanna explore for yourself.”

Bucky barks out a laugh. She’d obviously picked up on how he’s been peering around every corner like he wants to absorb every detail and map all exits and entrances. He’s paranoid and has a background in the army, alright, so sue him.

He gives her a short salute, which makes her laugh brightly. He watches her reach down and grab hold of Pete’s hand, leading him into the room where a pretty lady is reading a book out loud to the class. Pete jams his fingers into his mouth, staring wide eyed at her in hushed awe, and all but forgets about Bucky watching from the doorway. Shaking his head, he sets off down the corridor, following the path without really knowing where he’s going. He knows his way from the lobby, of course, he’d memorised that when they set off, but right now he’s meandering freely, simply curious about the school he’s pretty sure his son is going to.

He ends up in a corridor with one half painted with huge flowers, pink and orange lilies blooming across the walls and daffodils and orchids in pretty shades of purple and yellow growing up the ceiling. Bucky spins slowly to take it all in, until it shifts into the dark blue of the night sky lit up with stars. The constellations are outlined, dotted together with their names and coordinates printed in neat block writing next to them. It’s beautifully detailed, something Bucky hasn’t seen since long nights spent stretched out on the hard ground, little rocks digging into his back and sand gritting the sides of his eyes shut but his team right there, a blanket of safety that made him feel like he could let his eyes go half lidded and the stars blur slightly around the edges.

He’s shaken out of his nostalgia by someone stumbling into him, knocking him hard to the side and banging into a set of shelves that run across the wall. He doesn’t land on his good arm, the prosthetic taking most of his weight and Bucky feels it snap at the joint, startling a groan out of him.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I’m so- here, let me help you, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you, I was carrying this huge stack of paper and I- let me help you up, here, grab my hand-” and a hand is waving in front of his face, Bucky blinking rapidly to try and keep up with this guy’s babbling.

He looks up, blinks, and blinks again.

Holy _shit_ , this guy is hot, is built like a goddamn brick wall with shoulders about two feet wide and biceps that could probably strangle a man with a mere flex of muscle. He’s crouched down in front of Bucky, on the balls of his feet, his cargo pants stretching across seriously impressive thighs and Bucky blinks again because jesus christ, not only is he basically the wet dream he’s been having since he was fourteen but he’s also _adorable_.

Big, blue eyes are peering at him from under a soft blonde fringe, and god his cheekbones are so pretty and his ears are so cute and round and his mouth looks soft, so soft and plush and kissable, and he’s blushing so prettily and basically Bucky’s brain seems to have been fried in the last three seconds.

The guy’s hand is still reaching for him, so Bucky reboots himself and uses the prosthetic to push himself up a little, hearing a creak and feeling the grind, using his good hand to grasp the guy’s wrist and pull himself the rest of the way up. Really, he doesn’t pull himself up at all since the blonde exerts enough strength that Bucky actually stumbles slightly before getting his footing.

He’s clutching his prosthetic arm around his waist, not wanting to move it and aggravate whatever the heck has broken any more, and the guy just keeps on apologising when really all Bucky wants to know is his name. So he takes a chance and sticks his good hand out, loudly interrupting the blonde guy.

“James Barnes, nice to meet you pal,” he says.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry," he says in a rush, grabbing Bucky's hand and hastily shaking it in a firm grip. I’m Steve, I’m- I’m Steve Rogers.” He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck with his hand and it’s so adorable Bucky just wants to tip his chin up and kiss his nose.

“I’m glad you’ve got a name, it was gettin’ weird callin’ you ‘Blonde Guy’ in my head,” he says laughing. It’s awkward, but Steve is so endearing that Bucky doesn’t mind one bit.

Steve chuckles a little, still blushing, and then suddenly seems to notice Bucky’s got one arm wrapped protectively around his middle. His eyes widen comically, and he reaches out and tugs on Bucky’s shirt sleeve, revealing the tear in the prosthetic his fall caused.

His eyes dart towards the dog tags hanging around Bucky’s neck and his mouth opens like he’s going to start apologising again so Bucky cuts him off at the pass.

“It’s okay, I know a guy,” he grins, thinking of Stark.

“No, I feel so bad, don’t worry, I can contact someone, I know a guy-”

“Didn’t I just say that _I_ know a guy?” Bucky asks, laughing. Steve looks so earnest, it’s almost killing him not to reach out and cup his cheek, tell him it’s okay.

Steve shoots him an incredulous look, like he doesn’t believe him at all.

“No really,” he insists, “I know a guy, it’s okay, I can call him and he’ll fix you- I mean, not fix you but help fix… it,” he finishes awkwardly. Bucky feels almost hysterical laughter bubble up his throat and he can feel a smile on his face that’s truly genuine because it’s starting to hurt his cheeks. God, Steve is so sweet.

He doesn’t really know how to go about this, knows he’s crushing hard but is also aware that he’s known Steve for less than five minutes, this huge, beautiful man with gentle hands and kinder eyes. So he scuffs his feet and bites his lip, looking up at Steve from under his eyelashes in a way he knows so many women have fallen for before, offers his good hand in Steve’s direction.

“Why don’t you give me his number then, since you think he can _fix it_ so well,” he says, waggling his eyebrows. If Steve hadn’t been blushing before from Bucky’s bedroom eyes, he certainly is now.

Steve plucks a pen from one of the boxes on the shelves, cradling Bucky’s palm in his and printing out a name and ten digits in the centre. When he gets his hand back to read it, he startles out a laugh, not only because the neat block handwriting matches the constellation names written on the walls, but also because Steve has just written down Tony Stark’s name and number on his palm.

“It seems your guy is also my guy,” he laughs.

Steve’s mouth drops open ( _again_ , god, it’s like he’s _asking_ for Bucky to stare at it) and he stares at Bucky like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“You know Tony? I mean, we both know Tony?”

“Yeah, yeah- he’s a lucky guy, huh,” he mutters. God, he can’t stop smiling, and it must be infectious because a slow grin is stretching across Steve’s face, and now _he’s_ the one looking at Bucky from up under his eyelashes and asking, “How have we not met before?”

And, really, that’s the question isn’t it.

.

Bucky helps Steve gather up the sheets of paper he’d dropped before, bundling them together and pressing them into Steve’s arms, before setting off in the direction he came and Steve was heading.

He mentions how beautiful he thinks the paintings on the walls are which makes Steve blush and stutter. It turns out that Steve’s the art teacher here at the school, taking afternoon classes with the kids and spending his mornings painting in his apartment out in Dumbo. He looks embarrassed that he’s shared that, but Bucky doesn’t mind, selfishly hoarding everything Steve’s telling him to pick apart later.

Bucky explains how he’s here to look around for his son, how a friend recommended it for kids like Peter who love science. Steve looks excited at this, enthusiastically expounding on the merits of coming to a school like this, how rich an experience it is for young minds. Bucky watches the way Steve’s eyes light up and hums contentedly from the back of his throat. His shoulder might hurt like a bitch from where the prosthetic has been forcibly torn away from the joint but he can almost forget the pain in the face of Steve and his lovely smile.

They slowly make their way back to the classroom Darcy dropped Peter off at, chatting lightly as they walk, until they stop at the door. Peter looks up and spots him immediately, hopping off his seat and rushing over towards his dad.

“Oof,” he mutters when Peter barrels into his legs. “You have fun, buddy?” he asks and Pete nods his head vehemently.

“Yeah, daddy, come look!” he tugs at Bucky’s hand, repeating “Look, look!” until Bucky follows him, throwing a rueful smile at Steve over his shoulder. Steve, leaning against the door jam, raises a hand in a small wave before turning disappearing down the corridor.

Bucky pretends he doesn’t feel small pangs of disappointment now Steve and his lovely shoulders have gone, and instead listens to his son babble about the experiment they were doing, how the water will turn cloudy if carbon dioxide is present. Peter looks so happy, and Bucky doesn’t hesitate for a single moment when Darcy offers to get him some paperwork to fill out.

And if he surreptitiously signs Pete up for afternoon art classes, well, no one needs to know the reason why.

.

He figures he should go see Stark straight away about his arm, but as soon as they get home Peter crawls up onto Bucky’s bed and flops onto the duvet. He seems absolutely exhausted, but it’s not good for him to sleep in his clothes, so Bucky does the same thing he’s done a dozen times before and slides his son’s little shoes gently off his feet, lifts his arms up to tug his jumper off, and picks him up around the waist to properly tuck him in.

Then, looking at the sleep soft curl of Pete’s eyelashes fanning across his cheeks, he takes his own shoes off, strips down to his t-shirt and boxers, wrangles the prosthetic off his shoulder, and crawls into the bed as well. He curls himself around Peter, holding him to his chest, and drops off to sleep for a few hours.

His arm can wait.

.

Stark’s lab is ridiculous, filled with bits and pieces and things that look like they could set on fire at any moment. Bucky feels uneasy there, terrified that something will go off with a bang and he’ll… react badly. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s ducked behind a shelf or a car at the sound of a loud noise, his brain telling him he’s going to die if he doesn’t find cover _now_.

So Stark’s lab scares him a little, and not only because Tony digs around in his arm with a sort of glee usually reserved for five year olds on their birthday.

“So what happened huh? Got too enthusiastic with your alone time?” He waggles his eyebrows without raising his eyes from where he’s soldering something or other near the joint.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “It was your friend’s fault actually,” he says. Tony looks up at this, an expectant look on his face. “You know Steve, right?”

“Who, Rogers? The god of all things good? Freedom for all, children are the future, why doesn’t anyone hand-write letters anymore Steve Rogers?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Bucky leans back on the workbench, trying not to touch anything in case it explodes. One of Stark’s robots is zooming about near the kitchen-type area in the corner, and it rolls on over to Bucky, offering him a pot of coffee. It looks dangerous, a black coloured sludge that hardly moves at all it’s so stiff. But Bucky was brought up to be polite, so he picks a random cup scattered across Stark’s desk and offers it to the ‘bot, which whirs happily and pours out some coffee before zooming off again.

“Are you telling me _Steve Rogers_ is the reason why your arm is now broken?” Stark’s eyebrows are so high on his forehead Bucky’s vaguely worried they might migrate off his face.

“He works at the school my kid is going to in the fall? We bumped into each other- well, he bumped into me and I fell on my arm,” he explains.

“Peter?” Stark perks up, “Peter’s going to Steve’s super special science school where he actually teaches a subject that has nothing to do with science?”

“Yes, the super special science school,” Bucky rolls his eyes, “Pete’s very excited about it.”

Stark puffs out his chest, a small grin on his face. “Well he should be, he’s been influenced by myself and the good Dr. Banner.”

Bruce and Tony had met, despite Bucky’s desperate attempts for them not to, at Pete’s second birthday party. While Clint and Tony were similar, and Bruce got along easily with the archer, Bucky was afraid that Tony would raise Bruce’s blood pressure so far that there would be another Incident like the one over Christmas, where the doctor got so stressed he locked himself in his apartment for four days, refusing to answer the door for anyone. But surprisingly, Bruce and Tony got along like a house on fire, with Bruce allowing Tony to get up close in his personal space and tease him and Tony indulging Bruce’s occasional whims to have his own lab for experimentation at Stark Tower.

Really, Bucky wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’ve been sleeping together, but both had been incredibly tight lipped whenever he brought it up.

Bucky putters around Stark’s lab for half an hour, feeling a little out of sorts with nothing to do as Pete’s with Clint and Nat for the day. Tony gets JARVIS to order a pizza for them both as the arm is gonna take a while to mend, and they sit and munch on the slices Tony’s had transported from Harvard’s Pinocchio's out in Cambridge. It seems a bit much for pizza, but Bucky doesn’t really care because it tastes so good, and it’s Stark’s money anyway.

“No but seriously,” Bucky says as Stark takes off his goggles and puts down the soldering iron, “how have I not met Steve before? I thought we shared friends, Tony.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Barnes,” he replies, “I only know Steve because he lives in a building I own. Pepper set up interviews and shit to make sure the ‘right people’ got to live there and who could forget those shoulders?”

Bucky agrees. The shoulders are rather unforgettable.

Stark sends him off with a newly-mended arm and a promise to stop by and donate some science things to Pete’s new school. Bucky rolls his eyes, but he knows Tony has only the best interests, even if he goes about expressing them in odd ways. He spends the walk home across the Brooklyn Bridge wondering if he could get Tony to donate some art supplies to the school too.

Purely for Peter and his classmate’s educational benefit, of course.

.

Pete’s first day isn’t until mid-way through September, so they spend the rest of the summer visiting all the parks in Carroll Gardens and making their way through the animated series of Spiderman, Bucky editing his clients ‘scripts in his downtime and hanging out with Clint in a few bars whenever he can foist Pete off on Bruce for the night.

Bucky enjoys the lazy days, days where he and Pete don’t change out of their pyjamas and have a discovery channel marathon instead, days where they wander over to Prospect Park and spend the afternoon playing chase and tag, stopping for ice cream on the way home. It’s hard to think half his time with his son will be cut down when he starts school, only having the mornings, weekends, and Wednesdays to spend time with him rather than the whole week.

But it turns out to be okay. Bucky wakes up Peter or gets woken up by him, fixes him some cheese on toast for breakfast (or avocadoes if he remembers to buy them). He gets him dressed and combs his hair, helps him brush his teeth, Pete stood on a little stool in the bathroom and Bucky gelling his hair behind him. They watch ‘toons for an hour, Bucky sorting out what he needs to read and edit that day, before they head up to Bruce’s to say good morning. They’ll walk down to the shops if they need more food, maybe take a detour and have a look in some of the bookshops, before going home and having lunch.

Packing Pete’s bag for school the first time was weird, but it becomes normal to put in a small pencil case filled with crayons for his art class in the afternoon, a little tupperware full of grapes or apple slices or orange segments, a spare shirt just in case things get messy. And things often get messy, it turns out.

He routinely drops Peter off at one o’clock, saying a passing hello to the cute blonde girl with the lip piercing behind the desk as he signs his son in. Pete’s usually got his face pressed up against the glass watching the lizards or the fish and Bucky has to drag him away so he can give him a big hug and press a kiss to his forehead before Darcy comes to take him to his first class. Sometimes it’s Jane, the lady who leads the Our Big Galaxy class, or Thor who teaches Animals In Our Neighborhood, or occasionally Phil, the director of the school, who takes Peter by the hand and leads him towards the library, something that never fails to make his son squeal in delight.

He only sees Steve at the end of the school day, five o’clock on the dot. Steve stands in the parking lot and makes sure all the kid’s get picked up, chats to the parents, and hands out pieces of artwork that have been made that day.

Once, Bucky comes to pick Peter up late, having been caught up in a particularly messy horror novel that needed some serious cutting down. When he arrives at the school the parking lot is empty, save for Pete and Steve, the blonde standing next to the most badass motorbike Bucky has ever seen and his son perched on top of it.

Of course Steve would drive a motorbike.

Steve spots him quickly and waves him over. Peter is playing with the handlebars of the bike, making vroom noises and twisting his hands like he’s driving it. He looks adorable, and Bucky would snap a picture if he wasn’t so scared he’s gonna fall off the damn thing.

“Hey, I’m so sorry I’m late,” he says as he jogs over.

“It’s not a problem,” Steve smiles brightly, “I was just showing Peter how to drive the bike.”

“He’s a little young, don’t you think?”

Steve laughs, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He looks ridiculously fantastic, cargo pants and checked shirt tucked into his belt and wearing a brown leather jacket that looks as soft as butter. Really, it should be illegal for a man as wholesome as Steve to look so goddamned fuckable all the time.

“Look,” he says as Bucky lifts Pete off the bike and into his arms, “there’s the Fall Fair coming up soon, before hallowe’en, you’re welcome to come.” He’s watching Pete fish out some stray leaves that have fallen in Bucky’s hair and biting his lip.

“Oh yeah? We’d love to come, just gimme the time and the date and we’ll be there.”

“Really?” Steve looks like he wants to bite his tongue off. “I mean- that’s great, I’ll be sure to shoot you an email- I mean, everyone gets an invite but- I’ll- yeah,” he finishes, rubbing a hand through his neat blonde hair and messing it up. He’s blushing an awful pretty shade of pink and Bucky physically resists the urge to push a lock of hair back that’s fallen into Steve’s eyes.

He adjusts Pete on his hip, bringing himself back into the moment. He grins at Steve, quick and bright, before nodding and telling him again that they’ll be there.

“Do I have to bring anything?” he asks suddenly, already halfway across the parking lot. Turning, he sees Steve still looking in his direction, his hands jammed into the pockets of his pants and his shoulders hunched up around his ears.

“Uh, just yourself, I think,” he calls back. Bucky nods, turns around again and heads out of the parking lot.

“Oh,” he starts when he reaches the gates, “is it okay if I bring someone, y’know, a friend?”

Steve looks at him for a long moment, and Bucky can’t see his eyes from where he’s standing which is a crying shame. Steve’s eyes are the prettiest he’s ever seen, bar his own sons.

“I… think that’s okay,” Steve says finally. “I don’t see how it would be a problem.” He laughs a little, shaking his head. He shrugs, lifting a hand to wave at Bucky.

“I’ll see you tomorrow Mr. Barnes,” he calls.

“It’s Bucky, honestly,” he replies, “You can call me Bucky.”

Steve hesitates a little, before nodding jerkily. “Okay then,” he says, “See you, Bucky.”

He turns and straddles the bike, his thighs stretched across the leather, before gunning it and heading in the direction of the staff exit. Bucky watches him go, his blonde hair glinting in the sun, before sighing and asking Pete how his day was. He distracts himself from the memory of Steve blushing by listening to his son babble about how Thor promised they could meet some horses soon, and do you think they’re as big in real life as Thor tells them they are?

He doesn’t think he can handle his son riding a horse, bad enough that he’d just been sat on a motorbike. Maybe that’s a school trip Pete can miss, he decides.

.

“So,” Nat says as she passes him a beer, “have you thought about maybe starting dating again?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. If he thinks of Steve for a second, no one but him has to know.

“Don’t you have work to do?” he replies, pointing at the stack of ‘scripts on the table. It’s a Sunday, and Peter is being entertained by Clint at the shooting range for the afternoon while he and Nat tackle the huge pile of ‘scripts that have been sent in over the last few weeks.

“I’m multitasking.”

She’s looking at him sternly, the hard line of her mouth and the delicate arch of one perfectly sculpted eyebrow telling him she’s not going to give this up. He sighs and throws down his red pen, accepts the beer and leans back, getting comfortable for the inevitable.

“You know that Karen likes you right? She’d bang you in a heartbeat.”

“Who the hell is Karen?” he asks, confused.

“The woman on reception at Pete’s school? The one with the lip ring,” she explains, rolling her eyes at him. He shrugs.

“I guess she’s cute.” He leans forward, looking her straight in the eyes. “But I don’t want just a quick lay, Natasha, if I’m gonna do this I wanna try an actual relationship y’know.”

She blinks at him slowly. “A minute ago you didn’t want to date at all, and now you want a serious relationship?” She shakes her head, “You sure you’re not on your period there, Barnes?”

“Shut up, Nat,” he snaps. She looks a little startled, so he sighs heavily and holds his hands up by way of apology.

“Look, maybe you could set me up on a few dates is all,” he mutters.

She narrows her eyes at him. “You sure?” she asks, and at his replying nod, ventures more hesitantly, “Just girls?”

He stares down at the tabletop, thinks of Steve’s broad shoulders and trim waist, the curve of his back and his pretty mouth, how his hair would look messed up all over Bucky’s pillow.

“You know what,” he says finally, taking a large swig of beer, “why not throw some guys in there, just for fun.”

Nat smiles, pats him on the hand. “I’m glad, James.”

.

The first date she sets him up on is with Stacey, a chirpy blonde who jogs in the park with Nat every now and then. She’s very pretty: big brown eyes, soft lips, wonderful curves. But she’s also about seventeen.

Well, she’s actually twenty-two, but Bucky, who is closer to thirty than twenty at this stage, with a kid and a decade in the army under his belt, feels a bit like a pedophile sat next to her in the booth at the bar. They’re in Dumbo, out near the riverfront, because apparently that’s romantic and the type of place girls like to be taken on a first date.

She’s flirting brazenly with him, touching his arm and flicking her hair, crossing and uncrossing her legs so he can see her bare thighs. He’s feeling more and more uncomfortable, sitting tense in his seat and laughing stiffly at the things she says. He’s not really paying attention, rather looking for an escape route so he can call Nat and yell at her down the phone because, really, what was she thinking. He’s too old for this.

Stacey stops yammering enough for Bucky to stammer a few words out about getting a drink before hightailing it to the bar, ordering a tumbler of Glenfidditch. He taps his fingers on the bartop as he waits, feeling its sticky surface with his good hand and a mere annoyance of the pull on the prosthetic. The bartender slides over his glass and Bucky makes a grab for it, taking a large sip and letting it sit in his mouth for a bit, and then swallowing and savouring the smooth glide down his throat.

And, jesus, that girl over there waiting for him has only been legally allowed to drink for a year. A _year_. Way to make a guy feel old, huh.

He spins around so his back is to the bar, spreading his elbows on the counter and lazily holding the tumbler in his fake hand. He knows it won’t fall, the prosthetic has a grip that could deflate a football with a twitch of its fingers, but he almost drops it when someone clears their throat beside him and he turns around to find Steve staring at him in amusement.

“Jesus fucking Christ Rogers, you near as hell scared the shit outta me,” he exclaims.

Steve huffs a small laugh, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He lifts his own drink, a beer, salutes it in Bucky’s direction and takes a small swig. Bucky hurries to do the same, not taking his eyes off Steve for more than a second, only enough time to make sure he doesn’t miss his mouth and spill expensive whiskey down his shirt.

Steve looks great, wearing a plain white shirt and black jeans complete with a baseball cap jammed on his head, messing up his usually carefully slicked hair. It’s a Saturday night, though, so he has every reason to come out and let his hair down, so to speak.

It doesn’t stop Bucky from being curious though, because Steve doesn’t exactly seem like the go-out-get-trashed type, more like a bake-bread-for-old-ladies kind of guy. So he opens his dumb mouth and, of course, the first thing to come out is: “What’s a guy like you doin’ in a place like this?”

Steve laughs, fiddles with the label on his beer bottle. “I could ask the same of you,” he says with raised eyebrows, “It’s not like you live anywhere near here.”

Bucky concedes that he actually has a point. “‘m on a date,” he replies, tipping his chin in the direction of the booth he’d just vacated.

Steve twists around till he’s looking in the direction Bucky indicated, the material of his shirt bunching and stretching across his shoulders, plain white with hints of warm pale skin underneath. Bucky averts his gaze, instead watches a furrow form between Steve’s eyes as he looks at the girl powdering her nose or something, clutching a little hand held mirror.

“You’re on a date with a teenager?” he asks, incredulous. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“She’s actually twenty-two,” he says. He rubs a hand awkwardly through his hair, (which is getting long again, maybe he needs another haircut) “But you’re right- I feel like I’m grooming her or somethin’.” He grimaces at the thought.

Steve pulls a face too, hiding it behind the rim of his bottle but Bucky catches it, elbows Steve across the bar and watches as Steve chokes a little on his mouthful of beer.

“But seriously,” he starts, taking a smaller sip of his whiskey, “I asked Nat to find me someone to date and this is what she came up with.” He shakes his head. “I hope to good God she finds someone better next time,” he mutters, letting out a small sigh. Steve hums thoughtfully beside him, still looking at Bucky’s date.

Bucky watches him watching her. Maybe Steve likes her, maybe he wants to go talk to her himself. Knowing Steve, he probably wants to offer her his jacket to keep her warm and give her a gentle lecture about covering up and wearing appropriate layers for the season. He shakes his head again, looking away; this line of thought is stupid.

When he looks back, Steve is looking at him. He blushes like he’s been caught doing something bad, and a slow grin overtakes Bucky’s face.

“You never answered me,” he says, “Just what is a guy like you doing in a place like this?”

Steve chuckles and tips his head towards the bar. “My friend owns this place,” he explains, “I sometimes drop in and get a free beer.”

Bucky whistles, slow and steady. He could use a friend who owns a bar; free drinks are never something to rub your nose at.

“Anyway,” he says, shaking himself out of his reverie, “I should get back to my… date.” He hops down off the bar stool, salutes Steve, and weaves his way through the bar again, sitting down and smiling awkwardly at Stacey.

They chat steadily, Stacey handling most of the conversation while Bucky sips from his whiskey and tries not to wonder if Steve’s still at the bar or if he’s left already. He feels itchy in his own skin, stretched too tight and fidgeting in the wake of his encounter with Steve.

The bar gets busier and Bucky gets more and more uncomfortable. Now the volume in the room has gone up, Stacey has taken this as her cue to slide across the booth into Bucky’s personal space, sequestering herself under his outstretched arm like as if he’s done it on purpose. He hasn’t, of course, would rather she stay on her side of the booth so he didn’t have to be quite so overwhelmed by the amount of exposed skin she’s got showing in her outfit. His fingers are twitching nervously and he feels uncomfortably hot, hooking a finger into his shirt to pull it away from his neck and breathe some cool air. All this manages to do is expose his dog tags and spur Stacey into fishing them out of his shirt and cooing over them like they’re a shiny necklace given to him by the goddamn Queen of England.

As his fingers tighten compulsively on the tumbler in his palm, he’s startled by a friendly but polite tap on his shoulder. Both he and Stacey look up to find a tall, black man with a name tag proclaiming ‘Sam’ looking at Bucky.

“Phone for you,” is all he says, then walks away like he’s expecting Bucky to just follow on behind. He looks at Stacey and shrugs an apology, mouths “it might be an emergency” at her before getting up and following Sam across the floor, into a back room stocked with boxes of what is presumably alcohol and a mini fridge full of limes.

Sam gestures to the phone and turns and leaves without another word. Hesitantly, Bucky picks up the receiver and brings it to his ear.

“Hello?” he asks.

“Hey,” comes Steve’s voice down the line, “You looked like you were gonna bolt any second so I took the liberty of faking a call. You can tell her it’s a family emergency or something.”

Bucky says nothing for a few seconds, mouth gaping and eyes wide. Steve had been watching? Steve could tell how trapped he’d felt? Steve had thought to do this for him?

“...Have I overstepped? I mean-,” he rushes out, “I just thought- but never mind if I was wrong, you just looked like you could use a- friend is all. I’ll hang up now, you can- go back or whatever, I’m sorry.”

“No, wait, what? Steve,” he laughs a little in his gratitude, “You did a good thing.”

“Oh! Oh, well, I dunno, you just looked like you needed a break is all.”

“A break,” he rubs the back of his neck, “Yeah, a break is what I need.”

They breathe in silence for a moment, before Steve murmurs, “I’m glad I helped,” at the same time as Bucky says “Wanna get outta here?”

He laughs awkwardly, feels a blush rise in his cheeks. “I mean-”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “Let me just, get my coat and we can go, I mean- you need to say goodbye to your teenager anyway.”

“Ugh, god, you’re never gonna let this go are you?”

Steve laughs and hangs up.

.

Bucky’s smiling when he puts the phone down, he can see it in the small mirror above the mini fridge full of limes. His lips look swollen and red from where he’s chewed on them nervously during their conversation. He has to school his face into an appropriate expression of concern before heading back out and telling Stacey that Peter’s come down with the chicken pox and he needs to be home right away. Stacey pouts, grabs a napkin and scribbles her number down in lipstick, folds it into his hand and insists he call. He nods dumbly, grabbing his jacket and heading to the exit.

It’s cold outside, October turning the chill in the air into something that bites during the night. He’s not cold though, wrapped up in a dark blue pea coat from his army days with a wide collar and thick lining, buttons down one side to keep him safe and warm. Steve steps out wearing his brown leather jacket; he must have used his bike to get here.

They don’t say anything, rather just head off in the direction of York Street so Bucky can catch the F train back to Cobble Hill. It’s barely ten o’clock, the night sky not dark enough to see any stars and the air pollution too thick around Dumbo and Manhattan to even hope of stargazing. Bucky tips his chin up anyway, breathes in the cool breeze and imagines the stars twinkling above him like they used to do, far, far away.

Steve knocks into his shoulder, making Bucky giggle and trip up over his feet. Steve’s hand shoots out and grabs hold of his elbow, keeps it there, a press of hot warmth from his broad palm that Bucky can feel through two layers of clothing.

Once he’s steady, Steve doesn’t let go of his arm, rather curls his hand around his elbow and steers him gently in the right direction so that Bucky can tip his head back and close his eyes again, trusting Steve to keep him from walking into anything too drastic.

“So how’s Peter, hm?” Steve asks, his voice pitched low and intimate. It’s just them on the street, so it’s not like Steve has any reason to speak so hushed, but Bucky smiles and leans into him, enjoying the cadence of his soft voice.

“You mean, since you saw him yesterday afternoon?”

Steve laughs and Bucky joins in, the two of them smiling dopily at each other as they round another block.

“I meant in general. He’s turning three soon, right?”

“Yeah, in February, god forbid,” Bucky murmurs. He can still remember when Pete was crawling around in his Spiderman onesie with socks on his hands, slipping and sliding on the kitchen floor while Clint laughed his head off and snapped dozens of pictures. He’s grown so much since then, thundering about the apartment and nattering about plants and animals with Bruce, sitting on Clint’s shoulders with a mini bow and arrow and shooting randomly at stuff, half the suckers landing behind the sofa, sitting in Nat’s lap and patiently letting her comb his hair, pin colourful butterfly clips to the unruly locks that keep escaping to halo around his head, painting his nails in rainbow colours and blowing on them messily to get them to dry.

“He’s a good kid,” Steve says, squeezing Bucky’s elbow.

“I’m glad you think so, pal,” he replies, quirking his lips in a small smile that Steve returns as a large grin.

They walk the rest of the way in silence, Steve still holding Bucky’s elbow even though his eyes are wide open. Steve leaves him on York Street, waving and heading back in the direction they’d just come. It’s only now Bucky realises Steve must have walked a good four blocks in the wrong direction from where he’d parked his bike, and smiles.

He sticks his hands in his pockets, feels the napkin Stacey had written her number on, crumples it, and drops it in a nearby bin.

.

Once he’s seen Steve outside of the school setting, it’s like the floodgates have opened and suddenly he sees him _everywhere_. He’s dropping Pete off at Clint and Nat’s and there’s Steve, coming out of an art shop down the street. He’s in the park having a picnic with Bruce and his son and there’s Steve, jogging around the path in a very tight grey shirt. He’s taking Pete to visit Tony and Pepper in Manhattan and there’s Steve, driving down the street on his motorbike with his shades hiding his eyes.

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with all this new footage of Steve outside of his regular school environment. He’s a teacher at his son’s school, but he’s also a regular guy running laps in the park and sweating through his shirt. Bucky stores everything away for later, guiltily thinking about Steve’s shorts clinging to his thighs, the sweat that gathers at the small of his back, his broad palms hot on Bucky’s skin whenever he’s got a few minutes to himself in the shower.

It’s not the real thing though, of course. It’s not the same as being held down by another body, wrapping his legs around another man’s thighs and feeling them flex toward him, not the same as the oppressive heat that two bodies produce together, sweat sliding between them, not the same as gripping broad shoulders and throwing his head back, groaning low in his throat and enjoying the bloom of pain when his partner decides to lean in and _bite_.

His hand can only do so much, but his imagination runs wild. All roads, it seems, lead to Steve.

.

The next date Nat sets him up on is with a guy called Mark, and Nat assures him he has the kind of shoulders Bucky usually goes for.

“He’s exactly your type,” she says as she describes Mark as tall, dark, and handsome. Bucky raises an eyebrow, thinks of Steve’s pretty blonde hair, and decides not to say anything.

Needless to say, Mark never shows up, leaving Bucky scuffing his feet on the curb outside the restaurant, hands in his pockets and head down low, trying to avoid the rain that’s dripping on his head regardless.

His hair is ruined, freshly cut in a style Mel had suggested, short down the sides and longer on the top. Nat had stuck some weird sticky stuff on her fingers and spent half an hour fluffing it up at the front. He thought he looked pretty good; he wanted to look good, his first official date with another man in over a decade.

And of course, he doesn’t show.

He gives up after half an hour, turns his coat collar up against the wind and sets off home. It’s cold and wet and miserable, coming up to the end of October and the days are getting shorter, the wind becoming cooler. The lights glisten off the puddles on the sidewalk and Bucky viciously steps in each one, channeling his son and splashing water up the sides of his boots.

He’s angry, he’ll easily admit that. He’s never been stood up before. More than that he’s hurt: disappointed deep down inside. This was meant to be his first big step towards being more comfortable with who he is, showing people that he enjoys the company of another man not just inside the safe four walls of his bedroom, that he’s working towards not giving a shit what other people think about his sexuality and instead just enjoying it.

If he’s honest, he’s always enjoyed being with men more than he has with women. He likes that he can give up control entirely, let someone else mould his body and tell him what to do, how to move, hissing “ _yes, exactly like that, come on, more more more_ ”. He likes that he can push apart strong thighs, use his fingers to tease and touch and stroke, grab hold of broad hands and pin them to the headboard. He likes the ache low in his back the next morning when he’s taken it _so good, so well, you’re beautiful like this_ , the burn in his thighs when he’s pushed himself towards the end, working hard to keep moving because it feels so, so good.

He likes the variety that comes with other guys, not just him sticking his dick in a warm place and thrusting his hips. He likes jerking off lazily with one hand wrapped around himself and the other around someone else’s cock, or cradling both in his fist and coming together. He likes getting blown by another man’s mouth and running his fingers across a strong jaw, feeling the stubble chafe his fingertips; likes blowing other guys: the feeling of being full, of having something to swallow around, opening his throat and taking it all the way, hearing his partner groan, deep and low. He likes doing it sloppily, lots of lube and come sticky on his belly; he likes doing it hard and fast from behind with hardly any prep and tight heat around his cock; he likes rotating his hips while sat in someone’s lap, grinding down and tipping his head back, exposing his bare throat, pulse hammering in his veins.

It’s not that he wants people to know the intimate details of his gay sex life, more that he doesn’t mind them knowing that he’s at least sixty percent into dudes. He wants to not feel like he has to hide his desire to hold another man’s hand, eat dinner sat across the table from his boyfriend, partner, whatever. And yeah, maybe some of those fantasies include Steve, but he’s never shown any hint of interest in Bucky or any other man, so they stay firmly in the realm of fantasies and otherwise he doesn’t touch his feelings with a ten foot pole.

He’s still walking through the rainy streets, kicking his heels in the puddles, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, when his phone buzzes somewhere in his jeans. He fishes around for a bit (and god, he’s reminded of Nat’s rants about how women’s jeans have too little pockets and men’s jeans have too much, and how unfair is that, seriously?) until he finds his phone, sees a text lit up on the screen.

 **Steve:** _is peter okay????_

Bucky frowns at the screen, types, _yes, why wouldn’t he be?_

His phone buzzes a second later:

 **Steve:** _there’s a bug going around school_

followed immediately by:

 **Steve:** _i just wanted to make sure_

He smiles bemusedly. Why on earth would Steve be texting him this at seven o’clock on a Friday night? He types back: _that’s sweet of you_ , wincing after he’s pressed send. That was probably a dumb thing to say wasn’t it? Steve is probably just being a concerned teacher, not thinking specifically about Bucky and his kid on a Friday night.

 **Steve:** _it’s nothing, pete’s one of my favourites. don’t tell anybody though_

Bucky laughs, types: _so it’s pete now is it?_

 **Steve:** _you call him pete_

 **Bucky:** _i’m his dad though_

**Steve:** _i’ll make up my own nickname for him then_

Bucky laughs out loud, half forgetting about the rain dripping on his head. He can imagine Steve pouting at him, insisting that he's an art teacher, he can be creative and come up with a nickname if he wants.

**Steve:** _what’s his middle name again?_

**Bucky:** _benjamin_

Steve doesn’t reply for a few minutes, and Bucky starts to think maybe he’s given up on the conversation, found something better to do than to text a single dad about his kid. He walks morosely, hunching his shoulders against the wind and palming his phone. It buzzes about five minutes later, _1 new text: Steve_ appearing on the screen, and his heart thumps loudly.

**Steve:** _benji?_

Bucky blanches, sends back: _no way_

**Steve:** _i can’t think of any other nicknames i’m afraid_

 **Bucky:** _well don’t strain yourself there pal_

 **Steve:** _:P_

Bucky snorts, decides he’s above replying to an emoticon as dumb as that. He spends the rest of the walk home skipping around the puddles rather than splashing through them, a spring in his step that wasn’t there before.

.

The Fall Fair comes about surprisingly quickly, scheduled on a crisp Tuesday afternoon. It’s sunny but cold, and neither Pete nor Bucky mind, wrapping up in coats and scarves before setting out to meet Clint and Nat.

He’d invited Nat, who automatically came hand in hand with Clint, and then Bruce had heard about it from Peter and told Tony, who decided to bring Pepper with him and call it a ‘day off’. Suddenly, Bucky has a whole troupe of people to bring to the fair with him, which is kind of embarrassing, but also sort of nice. Peter certainly loves them all being together, something that usually only happens at Thanksgiving, and he’s busy hopping around and throwing wet autumn leaves at people’s legs.

The Fall Fair, it turns out, consists of several stands in the park near the school: games to win sweeties and teddy bears, a raffle, a brass band, a balloon contortionist, and, surprisingly, a kissing booth. It’s busy and loud, kids running around as screaming at each other, adults huddled in groups with cups of juice chatting to each other or taking pictures of their children making a mess of an attempt to eat a whole cupcake in one go.

There are blankets spread under trees, and Tony immediately claims one for the group, yelling “Mine!” and diving onto it, spreading his limbs out like a starfish. Peter giggles and jumps onto his chest, Tony making an exaggerated groaning noise and picking Pete up above his head to blow him a messy raspberry.

Clint gets distracted by a game of frisbee quite quickly, getting mobbed by kids who jump up and try to grab it. It rapidly devolves into a game of Piggy in the Middle, Clint roping Bucky into playing with him, tossing the frisbee far above the children’s heads and watching their little arms fly up to try and catch it.

Pepper and Bruce go mingle, donating some money here and there. Pepper brings back a cupcake for her and Nat to share, pink icing and a sugar rainbow stuck on top, and Bruce gets a red and gold balloon hat for Tony to wear. He positions it on his head with pride, pretends to wave like the Queen, and proceeds to wear it for the rest of the afternoon, despite the fact that it doesn’t match the grey suit he’s wearing.

Pete runs off to dig up grass and sand with his friends, a little girl with blonde hair named Gwen and a boy called Eugene, all three ending up with their hands dirty and their shirts stained. Bucky wanders over to the picnic blanket to watch, Pete squealing with delight when Eugene picks up a worm and dangles it in front of Gwen’s face, who promptly kicks him in the arm for his troubles.

He sits back and enjoys the cool fall breeze, the sound of children’s laughter all around him and the sun on his skin. He’d spotted Steve earlier, but not wanted to disturb him as he was chatting with other parents. He’s seen Thor and Jane around too, Thor spending a lot of time trying to recreate balloons like the expert and Jane dragging him away when his attempts kept going wrong. Darcy has spent most of the afternoon in the kissing booth, accepting smooches and pecks off parents and children alike, collecting a buck a kiss every go. Bucky had gone and given her a kiss on the cheek, slipping five dollars in the pot as he did so. He likes Darcy, thinks she’s funny even when she’s not hopped up on caffeine and insane whenever she is.

He lays back and lets the afternoon wash over him, lazily draping one arm across his eyes to keep the glare out. This is how Steve finds him, an hour later, when most of the kids have been roped into a game of mini-soccer, the winning team promised a candy bar each.

“You having fun?” he asks.

Bucky doesn’t move from his position, just arches his back and lets out a long, slow, and satisfied sigh. “Tonnes of it.”

Steve kicks him in the thigh with his toes, making Bucky wrinkle his nose and remove his arm, glaring up at the blonde above him. “Move over,” Steve says, and Bucky budges to the side a bit to make space for Steve and his massive shoulders. He plonks down beside him, wrapping one arm around his knees and picking at the fabric of the picnic blanket with his free hand.

Bruce and Nat are sat with them, watching the game progress with easy interest. Clint and Pepper had volunteered to be referees and are therefore well and truly stuck in the melee, and Tony’s running up and down the side of the pitch cheering on Peter.

Bucky doesn’t try to start any conversation and neither do the others, quite happy to sit in each other’s presence and enjoy the afternoon sunshine together. Steve has met all of Bucky’s friends by now: Tony and Pepper because he already knew them, and Clint, Nat, and Bruce from various times when Bucky himself couldn’t pick up or drop off Pete at school and so sent one of them to do it for him. They got on well: Bruce taking an interest in Steve’s motorbike, Nat passing on family recipes to Steve when he expresses how awful he is at cooking, Clint and he having some sort of ‘that’s what she said’ competition where Clint is winning by a landslide and Steve probably just goes along with it because Clint always laughs so hard. It makes something warm unfurl in Bucky’s chest to know that his closest friends like Steve, that they’re comfortable enough to welcome him into their little group, their makeshift family.

The whistle blows half time across the park and Clint yells, “Hey, Buck! You want some lemonade?”

“Nah, you’re okay,” he calls back, propping himself up on his elbows now that the silence has been broken.

“Why do people call you that anyway?” asks Steve lowly, “Bucky’s not exactly a common name.”

“I grew up on an army base,” he replies, “and my middle name’s Buchanan, so I got slapped with Bucky and became the base’s mascot. It’s stuck ever since.”

“Which army base?” he questions, and Bucky’s half surprised, half delighted that Steve’s chosen to ignore the chance to dig at him for having such a weird-ass middle name.

“Camp Lehigh,” he says, “out in Virginia.”

Steve whistles. “You’ve got a pretty thick Brooklyn accent for someone who grew up seven hours away,” he comments.

“His first boyfriend infected him with it,” chimes in Nat and Bucky pulls a face at her, which she ignores, tugging Bruce up to go chat with Pepper. This leaves just Bucky and Steve on the blanket, but neither of them move, either too comfortable to bother or too scared to break the moment.

“Your first boyfriend, huh?” Bucky eyes him sharply, wonders wildly if he’s gonna make a crack at his sexuality even though that’s so out of character for Steve he’s almost ashamed the thought even entered his head. “My boyfriend’s have never had that much of an impact on me,” he says before Bucky can get a word out, “although I’m from Brooklyn anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t count.”

“You had many boyfriends, Steve?” he asks cheekily.

Steve blushes pink to the tips of his ears, an embarrassed smile on his face. “Not _many_ ,” he replies. “Believe it or not, I couldn’t ever get any girls to look my way when I was younger.”

Bucky gapes at him.

“It wasn’t until college that I started working out, and by the time girls started paying attention I’d realised men were more to my taste,” he continues.

“Wait, hold up, what d’ya mean you couldn’t get anyone to look at you,” he gestures wildly, “you’re- well, you’re _you_.”

Steve laughs a little, rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I was scrawny as all get out when I was a kid,” he says.

“No fucking way.”

“Yes fucking way,” he chuckles, “Look.” He fumbles for his wallet and slides out a battered photo of a teenager who looks like Steve, with his chin and eyes and lips, but about a foot shorter and who looks like a strong breeze could knock him over. There’s an older lady stood next to him, Bucky guesses it’s his mom, and a young girl too, with dark brown hair and red lipstick.

“There,” he says, “proof I was all skin-and-bones.”

Bucky can hardly believe it. The Steve in the photo looks like he’s not had a good meal in weeks, lanky and bony, all elbows and knees knocking awkwardly into each other. The Steve sat next to him today is made of toned muscles and ease of movement in his body that only comes with true confidence.

He slides the photo back into Steve’s wallet, hands it back to him, and flops down on the blanket again.

“Well that’s a surprise,” he drawls, closing his eyes. He hears Steve laugh, then the rustle of clothes that indicates Steve’s lying down next to him.

The rest of the group meander their way back within the next hour, Peter coming over looking exhausted, only with it enough to utter a quiet “hi Mr. Rogers,” before crawling onto Bucky’s chest and tucking his head under his chin, passing out almost instantly.

They spend what’s left of the Fall Fair this way, all eight of them lazily dozing together on one small blanket, Steve pressed warm and solid against his side.

.

October brings with it Hallowe’en, and while Peter’s still considered too young by ninety percent of the group (only Clint and Tony protesting vehemently on his behalf), they spend the night giving candy to the kids who ring their doorbell and watching ‘toons in between.

October segues into November, Thanksgiving complete with Pete’s hand print turkeys stuck on the fridge with magnets and Bruce, Nat, and Clint joining them for dinner and a movie. Bucky silently thanks whoever’s listening for his little boy, for bringing together this wonderful bunch of people, for having Steve stumble into him of all people in a random corridor one hot summer’s day.

Nat sets him up on his third date in mid-December, having left a little time for Bucky to cool off after having been stood up with no explanation the last time.

It’s a girl this time, a petite brunette in a sparkly top named Dana, and Bucky takes her out for Italian in one of the many restaurants in Cobble Hill.

He likes Dana just fine: she’s witty and charming, knows a surprising amount about recent novels, and asks him about his time as a single father. She’s pretty in an understated way, freckles along the bridge of her nose and green eyes that look up through thick eyelashes.

It’s not a restaurant Bucky’s been to before, so he has whatever she has, ordering something called pork involtini with a green salad on the side. It’s only when he spears a piece of finely sliced meat and pops it in his mouth that he starts to feel his throat close up.

He coughs and hacks for a minute, Dana looking more and more alarmed as he chokes for breath.

“Shit,” he breathes, “is there pistachio nuts in that?”

Dana quickly waves over a waitress, is informed that yes, mortadella often contains pistachio nuts, and when Bucky’s throat starts to swell she calls an ambulance.

The nearest hospital is the Brooklyn Hospital Centre, a drive that takes seven minutes with a frantic Dana holding his hand in the back of an ambulance and Bucky feeling like he’s going to itch out of his skin. The paramedics in the ambulance make sure his airway isn’t restricted, but there’s not much more they can do until he gets to the hospital.

When he arrives, he’s whisked away and shot full of adrenaline. This combats the worst of it, leaving only a faint urge to scratch around his throat. They won’t let him leave the hospital like this though, and that poses a problem.

Neither he nor Dana drive, and neither of them drove here anyway, so it’s not like she can take him home. He would call Nat and Clint, but they’re enjoying a rare night off, and Bruce is out in Manhattan staying at Tony’s, so that’s out.

Dana suggests they split a cab, but that would cost more than it’s worth, so really his only option left is Steve. When he calls up, it goes through to voicemail, so he leaves a stammering message of the events and how he’d really appreciate it if Steve could give him a lift. He sends Dana home after her asking a final time if he’s sure, and spends his time waiting for Steve to call back filling out his medical forms.

Steve doesn’t call back though, instead turns up at the emergency room wild eyed and rumpled, looking for all he’s worth like he’s the one been shot with adrenaline, not Bucky.

“Bucky, jesus, are you alright?” he asks frantically, grabbing him by the shoulders and checking him over thoroughly. He can only imagine the sight he looks: swollen throat, red rash, and watery eyes, but Steve only looks concerned, not disgusted.

“I’m fine buddy,” he says, “just a minor allergic reaction, nothin’ more.”

Steve nods reluctantly at this, checks with Bucky’s doctors to make sure he’s telling the truth, before curling an arm around his shoulders and steering him in the direction of the exit.

“I’m sorry,” he says awkwardly, “I only have the bike, so you’ll have to ride it with me.”

It’s not like Bucky minds, fixes his arms around Steve’s trim waist, holds on for dear life when Steve guns it and roars off. He shouts directions in Steve’s ear occasionally, but mostly he enjoys the feeling of power under his thighs, the whip of wind around his body, the heat and smell of Steve surrounding him.

“Maybe I should come up,” Steve says when they arrive at Bucky’s apartment. “To check you’re alright, I mean.”

Bucky nods slowly, gives Steve his helmet, running a hand through his messed up hair and gesturing for Steve to follow. He opens the door, throws the keys in the bowl on the shelf, takes off his shoes and jacket and leads Steve over to the couch.

“It’s late,” he says, “You can stay if you want to.” He’s sleepy and his words are slurring, the adrenaline from the hospital crashing through his system now. The house feels empty, with Peter staying at Gwen’s for the night, so gathering a pillow and blanket for Steve to set up on the sofa acts as a distraction.

Steve shuffles quietly around the place, inspecting everything from Pete’s collection of Spiderman dvd’s to the multitude of drawings and paintings stuck on the fridge and surrounding areas. Bucky leaves him to it, goes and finds a pair of pyjama bottoms that might fit Steve from his drawers. He figures he can just sleep in the shirt he’s wearing now, as it looks pretty casual anyway. Steve thanks him when he hands over the clothes, and Bucky just waves him off, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

He remembers to take off his prosthetic arm at the last minute, crawls into bed, and is out like a light, sparing only half a thought to Steve’s presence in the next room.

.

Come next morning, light streaming through the window, Bucky wakes to find a stack of slightly burned pancakes and a note explaining Steve’s absence, a neat pile of blankets and pyjamas folded at the end of the sofa.

It would have been nice, he thinks, to wake up with Steve there, waiting for him.

.

The run up to Christmas finds Bucky spending more and more time with Steve. He starts to hang around for a couple of minutes longer at pick up, which turns into Steve walking with him and Pete down to the park, which turns into Steve accompanying them home in the afternoons to eat fruit and watch ‘toons.

This spurs another Spiderman marathon in Peter, who gleefully makes Steve watch the whole series with him, staunchly waiting for Steve to come home with them again before he watches the next episode. Pete’s latched onto Steve like a limpet, insisting that they must see him all the time, dangling off his arms like a monkey. Really, it’s impressive that Steve can lift Peter up like that with just one arm, and Bucky snaps a photo of it, laughing, and prints it out to pin it on the fridge.

Bucky’s never been really big on Christmas: growing up on an army base and then spending most of his December’s out of the country never really fostered a sense of holiday spirit within him. But Peter loves it, loves the snow and the lights and the carols, all the red and green sprinkling the streets, loves the santa hats and the candy canes. Steve does one of his art classes on cut out snowflakes and Peter comes home laden with white confetti, strings of crooked cut outs done with safety scissors and covered in a mound of glitter and glue. Steve looks sheepish, trailing alongside them and apologising for the amount of glitter, but Bucky just tells him to get to helping him stick them up in the windows of the flat and Steve drops it.

They spend one weekend baking cookies, cutting them into different shapes to reflect the holiday season. Flour gets everywhere: covering the surfaces in the kitchen, all in Peter’s hair, all over Bucky and Steve’s clothes. The icing has a similar fate, getting sticky on their fingers and wiped on their shirts. Pete has a blast dripping pink and white icing on cookies cut out in the shape of ballerinas, while Bucky and Steve sticking to traditional red and green to decorate the Christmas tree shaped cookies, the baubles and the bells. Steve goes away with a tin full of homemade treats and a sticky hug off of Peter, Bucky stood behind him with his hands on his son’s shoulders.

They skip the Rockefeller Center and go and do ‘The Walk’ around Dyker Heights on the 20th, the whole gang minus Tony and Pepper. The lights are beautiful, and insane, and Peter skips around like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. There are hundreds of Santa Clause's, Rudolph’s, Mary’s and Joseph's; snowmen are piled high like they’re going out of style, superheroes, disney characters, and the lights, _oh_ the lights, they shine brighter than anything Bucky’s ever seen.

Steve’s got his camera out, taking photos of Clint being a moron and trying to climb on the ornaments, of Nat all wrapped up in her scarf and boots, holding hands with Bruce who’s forgotten his gloves. He takes a whole bunch of photos of Peter, dashing down the street like he just can’t take it all in, the twinkling lights reflected in his eyes, the smile on his face big and beautiful enough to rival the whole goddamn avenue full of decorations.

Steve snaps a picture of him, standing outside of one of the more tastefully decorated mini mansions, after enough hours of walking around that Peter’s gotten more tired than enthusiastic. Bucky blushes to the roots of his hair, which he hopes to god no one can see in the dark, and makes his way over to Steve, standing with a dumb grin on his face and the camera cupped in his hands.

“Delete that immediately,” he demands.

“Nope,” says Steve, popping the ‘p’. “It’s a nice picture, I’m gonna print it out and put it on my fridge.”

He’s making fun of all the shot’s Bucky has stuck on the front of his fridge door: one of Peter passed out on Clint’s chest, one of Tony with the stupid balloon hat on his head, a whole load of group photo’s where they’re all pulling stupid faces at the camera. Bucky blushes to think of the amount of photo’s stuck on his fridge that Steve’s in: the one of Peter hanging off his arm like he weighs nothing, one of them covered in flour from their baking disaster, one of him, Bruce, and Bucky all meditating on the cleared out floor of his flat. His favourite is hands down the one of Pete and Steve, sat cross-legged in front of the tv watching Spiderman, both of their heads tilted to one side.

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Please just get rid of it,” he whines, “I look awful in photos.”

“I think you look stunning,” Steve says, then stammers, “I mean, the lights and everything, it’s a perfect shot really, couldn’t go wrong.”

Bucky just shakes his head, sticks his hands into the pockets of his winter coat to keep them warm. He can feel the biting cold seeping into his bones, making his prosthetic arm ache at the joint.

“Actually,” Steve says, interrupting Bucky’s train of thought, “Do you think… I mean, would you like to maybe, I dunno, sit for me?” He touches Bucky’s arm. “Just once, just for a painting.”

Bucky stares at him.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, it’s just an- an idea, it’s not a big deal, I’ll just-”

“I’ve never… sat for anyone before,” Bucky says, interrupting Steve who’s peering at him with wide blue eyes and a startled expression of a cat who didn’t expect any fish to be in the pond when it dipped it’s paws in.

He grins. “Call it a Christmas present, and you can paint me.”

Steve nods slowly, mouth agape. Some of his blonde hair has fallen into his eyes due to all the wild backpedalling he performed a moment ago, and Bucky leans forward, tucks it behind his ear softly, trailing his thumb across his cheek.

“A Christmas present,” he hears Steve echo behind him.

.

Christmas comes and goes, with a giant pin board from Nat for all his photos to stick onto and a pair of light up shoes he bought for Pete. They only really light up when you bang them, so Pete spends a good deal of time jumping around the flat, making an absolute racket. It makes Bucky extremely glad that they live below Bruce and not the other way around, or he’s sure he’d receive some kind of noise complaint.

New Years Eve is quiet and spent with Bruce upstairs, watching the ball drop with Peter squished between them, conked out from the late hour and all the celery sticks he ate earlier. Bruce and Bucky do a little toast over his head, clinking their glasses together and murmuring New Years wishes at each other, neither of them making any resolutions, as they wouldn’t stick anyway.

It’s hard to make time for Steve’s painting, what with school coming back in January, meaning Steve has to organise and plan all his lessons with the kids, which significantly cuts down the amount of time they have to spend with each other. But they find some time, tucked away on Wednesday afternoons when there’s no school and Clint volunteers to kidnap Peter and take him to the shooting range.

So Bucky finds himself standing in Steve’s studio apartment out in Dumbo for the first time ever, drinking in everything it has to offer.

It’s basically one huge room, with partial wall dividers instead of doors plonked in random areas, a bedroom and bathroom branching off to the side.

The kitchen is all chrome and high bar stools, a coffee machine tucked away in one corner that looks like it’s never been used, pots and pans barely touched hanging from the walls. Steve must not be lying when he says he's not a great cook.

The living room is lovely: soft carpets that Bucky’s feet sink into, his toes curling a little, appreciating the thickness and warmth. There’s a soft looking brown leather sofa facing a small tv, dwarfed by the record player next to it, pride of place. There’s rows and rows of shelves running down the opposite wall, choc-o-block full of records and albums, LP’s and EP’s. Bucky trails the fingers of his good hand along them as he makes his way to what must be Steve’s art studio, judging by the paint spatter covering the floor.

The studio itself is beautiful, airy and spaced out, white walls and windows six feet high to let the light in. The floorboards are stripped back and bare, creaking under Bucky’s feet as he walks. There’s tins of paint stacked in a corner, row upon row of paintbrushes in a bunch of different sizes and shapes, stacks of sketchbooks and canvas, pencils and charcoal, pastels and watercolours, little tubes of oil paints scattered around the place. There are three huge easels: two empty and a third set up with a blank canvas, ready for Steve to create a masterpiece.

And that’s what they are, really, masterpieces. A lot of the paintings are facing away from Bucky, piled so that he can’t see what’s on them, but the ones he can see are incredible. Intricate drawings of people and places done in pencil and charcoal, sweeping visions of cornfields and the seaside done in delicate watercolours, Nat and Bruce and Tony drawn in oil pastels, Clint done in acrylic paint, his back and shoulders and the blur of his hair, purple and cornflower yellow standing out starkly against the white background, his arm drawn back like he’s letting go of his bow string.

Bucky starts to feel honoured Steve wants to add him to his collection, if a little disappointed he hasn’t already been.

“So where do you want me?” He wrangles his arms out of his sweatshirt and dumps it on one of the stools near the canvas, waiting patiently for Steve to stop staring at him and actually talk.

“Uh, I don’t-” he starts, before gesturing to a space cleared in the corner, near one of the huge windows. “How about here, okay, just sort of… stand.”

“Anyone would have thought you’ve done this before, Steve,” he teases, moving to stand near the window. He hugs his arms across his chest, feeling a little out of place. He can see where Steve’s nerves are coming from, it’s a little weird to be alone with him in his home, none of their friends or even Pete to ease the tension.

Steve chuckles and goes to collect what he needs, grabbing some charcoal and a few erasers, dragging a spare easel in front of Bucky and placing a large sketchbook on it before making himself comfortable on a stool.

“I just wanna capture your form first,” he explains, “Get used to your figure, so to speak.” He grins, and Bucky smiles back easily, a little of the tension draining out of him.

It’s actually kind of boring, he thinks, though he doesn’t know why he thought it wouldn’t be. Standing still while Steve studies him and makes sweeping motions behind the easel, the scratch of his charcoal the only real noise in the room above their breathing, is making Bucky jittery with the need for motion. Steve’s burned through a couple of pages already, so Bucky figures it’s okay if he moves a little, working the stiffness out of his joints by swinging his arms about. He reaches up and massages the joint of his prosthetic, where it attaches to his shoulder, feeling the gnarly scar tissue there. It doesn’t hurt per se, rather feels sort of numb, a pleasant tingling sensation when he runs his fingers down the seam where synthetic skin meets real.

When he looks up Steve is staring at him, his fingers covered in black dust hovering above the page. He looks a little stunned, colour high in his cheeks and blue eyes wide and clear.

“You okay there, Steve?” he asks, just to make sure.

“Yeah-” he cuts himself off, his voice having come out gravelly. Bucky raises an eyebrow and Steve clears his throat, starting again.

“I’m fine, I’m just… thinking.” He shakes his head and goes back to looking at the page in front of him, shoulders tense and hands still hovering.

“Thinkin’ about what?” Bucky hesitantly ventures. They’ve not really done this kind of conversation before, the ones where there’s just them in the room but it still feels full, where their quiet mumbling sounds as loud and clear as bells, where they sit side by side and revel in the feeling of their arms brushing together, the heat and weight of another person making the air tense, stiflingly thick in the small space between them.

The kind of conversations Bucky had with his first boyfriend, where they didn’t say much of anything but felt like they didn’t have to.

“It’s just, Buck-” he breaks off, looking frustrated. He sits there with his brow furrowed for a moment, before suddenly hopping off the stool and striding towards Bucky with a purpose. Steve stops within arms length of him, and their of a height enough that they can see each other’s eyes with no problem, Bucky’s cloudy with confusion and Steve’s as bright blue as the sky, bright and beautiful.

He reaches forward, clasping both his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “Your arm is incredible. And I’ve seen you without it, sure, but I’ve never seen _you_ without it,” he says. Bucky just looks at him, still confused.

“You’re not making any sense, Steve.”

“What I’m saying… What I’m trying to say is-” he runs a hand through his hair, messing up the carefully gelled style. “Can I paint you?”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure I’ve already agreed to that,” Bucky states. “Christmas present, remember?”

“Yeah I know, I know, but… What I really want to paint is _you_. Without your prosthetic. So I can see what you look like.”

Bucky sucks in a breath, suddenly feeling like he’s been dropped in the deep end with no safety float. He’s not let anyone see his arm, or lack thereof, properly. When he goes to Tony to fix problems, he brings it already removed, so he doesn’t have to take off his shirt. He always wears an undershirt, just in case his collar dips low and someone catches a glimpse of his scars. He’s not been intimate with anyone other than his right hand in the two years he’s been back, telling himself it’s because of Peter when really his discomfort with his own disfiguration is what’s holding him back.

He looks at Steve and sees someone who won’t judge, someone who will appreciate his body, even if it is a little weathered and torn, fraying around the edges. He sees someone who will think he’s beautiful, as an artist and as a friend.

He’s not scared, he realises.

“Okay,” he says finally. “Lets do that.”

.

It takes forever to work out time to do it, of course, as Steve insists he needs more than one day to paint, laughing at Bucky’s incredulous expression. Surely it can’t take so long to do a painting, but Steve assures him he needs to prep, needs to map out the composition, get down basic lines, basic colours, then go into more detail. He rambles on about the incredible amount of shades and colours present in a single person’s skin for at least half an hour, Bucky nodding along on the opposite side of the table, sipping his coffee and watching Steve’s lips and hands move, Peter colouring in crayon next to him.

They figure Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a safe bet, blocking out the weekend and Bank Holiday Monday to spend in Steve’s studio. Bucky organises for Tony and Bruce to take Peter out to Tony’s house in Malibu that weekend to see the seaside in some actual sun, insisting that they go by plane, not car. He knows Tony would try and make it the longest road trip in existence, rolling the hood down and driving as fast as he can so the wind whips through their hair and Peter ends up laughing like a loon. He's not sure Tony and Bruce could handle his kid for the week it would take them to drive down there and back, and he really doesn't want to be away from Pete for that long.

The night before Steve's painting day, however, is Date Night. Nat had come over and insisted he give it another chance, just one more date, just one more try.

It made him slightly uncomfortable, what with the increasingly frequent thoughts he’s been having about Steve, not just ones of the private persuasion. Ones where he holds Steve’s hand in the park, pecks him on the cheek in front of everyone at pick up from Pete’s school, rests his head on Steve’s broad chest at night, listens to his heartbeat and enjoys the soothing slide of Steve’s hand down his bare back. They’re romantic thoughts, thoughts of the future, a future together. With Steve.

So he’s hesitant, but Nat wheedles and whines at him until he gives in. By ‘wheedle and whine’ he means Nat’s regular persuasion techniques: staring at him with hard eyes until he flinches -over the table, on the sofa, at the bus stop, in the park- until he just can’t take it anymore and bends to her will.

So he ends up walking to some place called Superfine in Dumbo, clean shaven and wearing a leather jacket that Tony forced him to buy. It’s a little chilly, mid January crispness soaking into his bones, and he arrives with his cheeks already flushed and more than a fair desire for some good whiskey.

His date, Drew, wolf whistles when he walks through the door, eyes appreciatively drinking in Bucky’s white shirt and jeans combo. Drew’s not so bad himself: taller than Bucky, with dark hair and dark eyes, broad hands and shoulders. He’s not got the same insane shoulder to waist ratio that Steve has, but- he shouldn’t even be thinking about Steve right now, what is _wrong_ with him, jesus.

Drew orders them drinks, wraps a warm hand around Bucky’s bicep and leads him over to the pool table in the corner, where he proceeds to lean in very close to Bucky’s neck and breathe hotly over his skin. It makes him a little uncomfortable, but he’s willing to go with it because the conversation is good and Drew’s pretty attractive for someone who’s not Steve.

He’s not willing to go with it, though, when Drew orders more and more drinks and his hands start to wander into invasive territory. Bucky tries squirming and twisting out of his grip, but Drew keeps grabbing his hips, pressing himself close and refusing to let go.

Bucky’s not exactly a small guy, he's got big shoulders, strong arms, long legs, but Drew is taller, looming over him and crowding into his space. If it was Steve doing it, and Steve would pretty much never, Bucky wouldn't mind, but instead it's some guy he barely knows running his hands all over his body like he's a prize to take home and display.

He'd feel kinda awkward if he said anything, though, so he laughs a little, blushes, and escapes to the bathroom, palming his phone in anticipation of calling Nat and bitching her out.

"What the actual fuck Natasha," he growls when she picks up the phone. "How the hell do you find these guys and, what's more, what the fuck makes you think I'd like any of 'em?"

"James, hello, what's wrong?"

"I've had to escape to the gents from Handsy McGrabHands that's what's fuckin' wrong," he grits out. The bathroom is empty but he can hear people milling around outside, so he keeps his voice low and periodically checks over his shoulder just in case Drew stumbles across him and tries to make a grab for his dick. Again.

Nat makes a noise of genuine realisation over the phone and Bucky watches himself nod his head emphatically in the small bathroom mirror.

"Yeah, _oh_ ," he hisses, "Now get me the fuck outta here."

"I can't," Nat replies, "I've had more than a few drinks."

"Well then _walk_."

"I have no idea where you are! But- wait a second, Steve might know- Steve?" she calls, her voice sounding further away.

What the fuck is Steve doing at Nat's, drinking? Bucky shifts on his feet, feeling uncomfortable in a new way, a way that makes his chest feel tight, the back of his neck hot, his hands twitch and fidget.

He can hear the faint conversation between Nat and Steve in the background, drowned out by the people standing and chatting outside the bathroom door.

"Steve says he knows where you are and that he'll come and rescue you." She sounds smug.

Bucky narrows his eyes. "Alright," he says, "but tell him this guy is not gonna give up that easy, tell him," he licks his lips, "tell him to bring his a-game."

"This is the perfect-" he hears Nat say, voice away from the phone again, just before he ends the call. He doesn't know how that sentence was going to finish but, from where Bucky's standing, nothing is perfect about this.

.

The minute Steve walks through the door all eyes are on him, staring hungrily.

Bucky doesn't blame them, he thinks faintly. Steve looks like he's on the prowl, ready to find the nearest attractive person and pin them to a wall somewhere, get down and dirty. Maybe on his knees.

He doesn't bother with anyone else in the bar though, zeroes his eyes on Bucky and walks towards him, stuck in a booth with Drew’s arm draped possessively across the leather. No, he doesn't walk, he full on _swaggers_ with a sway to his hips that Bucky has never seen before.

He swallows, hard. Steve is not fucking around.

“Bucky!” he crows when he reaches the table, “Long time no see, huh?”

He’s fucking ridiculous, Bucky thinks, with his stupid denim jacket that’s half covered in stars and stripes and stupidly tight white t-shirt, but he’s willing to go with it and see what Steve’s playing at.

“Steve, pal, what’re you doin’ here?”

“Oh, y’know,” he shrugs casually, sliding into the booth next to Bucky and crowding close, smelling clean and… manly. “I was just in the neighborhood, thought I’d check out the ‘scene, and well hey! Here you are.” He winks, picks up a toothpick and fiddles with it, flips it between his fingers like it’s not a major feat of dexterity.

Bucky doesn’t exactly know where he’s planning to go with this, but Steve hasn’t looked away from him once yet, completely ignoring Drew who’s sat gaping on the other side of the booth.

“Um, excuse me-” he starts.

“Y’know, Buck,” Steve says loudly, interrupting Drew’s stammering attempt to regain Bucky’s attention. Because, really, Bucky’s eyes are pretty much glued to Steve’s, and when they’re not they’re looking in the general direction of Steve’s insane arm muscles, all but bursting from his dumb denim jacket. “It’s been a while since we last had any… fun together.”

Bucky can see Steve’s lips twitch at the corners and tries valiantly not to burst out laughing.

“Uh, well it’s-” he clears his throat, “It’s been what? Two weeks? Gettin’ kinda clingy there don’tcha think Steve?”

If anything, Steve somehow moves _closer_ , one of his arms coming up to rest behind Bucky’s head and the other propping up his head over the table, his elbow resting against the sticky wood.

Neither of them can be bothered with Drew anymore, sitting all but forgotten on the opposite side of the booth, stuttering at the two of them with his eyes wide.

“Two weeks is two weeks too long,” murmurs Steve, and holy jesus, he’s looking at Bucky under his eyelashes, a smirk on his face that really just serves to remind Bucky how much he wants to cover his lips with his own.

“Now look here-” Drew tries again, but Steve leans forward and kisses Bucky, right there in the middle of the bar.

His lips are soft and just a little bit wet, and Bucky breathes sharply through his nose before pushing back, just a little. It’s chaste up until the moment where Steve’s tongue comes out to flick at the corner of Bucky’s lips, startling a noise out of him and causing him to drop open his mouth, which Steve immediately licks his way into.

Bucky doesn’t think he’s actually breathing at all, frozen in place at the booth, eyes half lidded and his mouth full of Steve’s _tongue_ , good god. He feels warm all over, his fingers curling closed just a little, almost as if they’re twitching to grab onto Steve’s shirt, haul him into his lap.

But Steve ends the kiss, biting on Bucky’s lower lip as a sort of farewell, and he just knows his lips will be red and swollen when he opens his eyes, cherry red from where Steve’s teeth dug in with a small, sharp bite.

“Wanna get outta here?” Steve breathes, voice low and panting as hard and heavy as Bucky is. It’s all he can do to nod vehemently, grabbing his jacket and not looking once back at Drew, following Steve out of the bar with his eyes glued to the obscene curve of his back.

“Oh my god, I am so, so sorry,” Steve says earnestly, as soon as they stumble out of the exit.

“You’re- oh,” Bucky says dumbly.

"I shouldn't have- I mean, you're a really good friend of mine."

“Your friend," he says slowly. "Well, okay,” he scratches the back of his neck. “At least it worked, huh?”

Steve nods emphatically, eyes wide and remorseful, like he’s somehow wronged Bucky by shoving his tongue down his throat. If anything, he’s wronged Bucky by not carrying on enthusiastically, maybe pushing him against the wall outside the bar or- on Steve’s motorbike, huh, where’d that come from?

“I’ll take you home,” is all Steve says, nudging him towards the bike and handing him a helmet.

The ride home is silent and weirdly awkward, Bucky feeling like the arms he has wrapped around Steve’s waist are not welcome at all, the stiff line of Steve’s back prompting him to skedaddle as soon as the bike stops moving.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, “I really am.”

Bucky just nods, bites his lip, and turns to make his way to the apartment’s front door, suddenly hit with the urge to hold his son close and not let go, only to remember that Pete's away with Tony and Bruce, leaving Bucky by himself.

.

"Mornin' pal," he greets when Steve opens his door the next morning, shoving a paper cup of coffee in the blonde's general direction before pushing his way past him, heading for the art room.

He refuses to let... whatever it is that happened last night affect their relationship, so he's decided that breezing his way through like nothing has happened is basically the best way to go about things.

He didn't count on Steve in a sleep shirt and a pair of sweatpants that cling to his ass, rubbing adorably at his eyes and clutching at the cup of coffee like it's the only real thing in the world right now, but hey, sometimes life throws you curveballs and you've just gotta roll with it.

"So where do you want me?"

"Jesus, Bucky, let me wake up a little first."

"Nope," he grins, "You said you wanted to paint me so paint me you shall."

Steve rolls his eyes at the dumb fake posh accent Bucky had put on but makes his way amiably enough into the art room, inhaling the coffee as he goes.

"That's the spirit," Bucky crows when Steve finishes the coffee in a few short gulps and crumples the paper cup, throwing it into what looks like a recycling bin. Because of course Steve recycles.

It takes a good half hour for Steve to pull himself together enough to actually start doing something productive, gathering supplies and setting up the easel, picking a few different sheets of paper and different kinds of pencil. He gestures for Bucky to pick a place behind the easel, so he hops up on a table that looks likes it's been used to recreate a Jackson Pollock masterpiece, gets himself comfortable, before yanking his shirt off with his good hand, pulling it smoothly over his head. He's had a lot of practice at this.

Steve stares for a few minutes, Bucky sat perfectly still and almost defiant, refusing to feel ashamed of his missing limb, the scarring around his shoulder that extends towards his collarbones, instead taking comfort in the dog tags dangling round his neck and clinking softly against each other, reminding him of who he is.

He lost his arm after a fall from the roof of a compromised building, swarming with enemy operatives and at the complete wrong angle to pick any of them off with his sniper. He remembers the rush of wind around him but not much else, except a freezing coldness that slid thickly like treacle across his spine, presumably from when they put him under so they could surgically remove his left arm that was hanging on by a thread of ligament, the only part left connecting him to a regular life.

Steve's silence isn't the worst response he's ever had, to be frank. At least he's not looking at Bucky with pity, rather with something... Bucky can't actually read whatever's in Steve's eyes, sort of dark but light at the same time, bright with the continuous goodness Steve seems to carry around with him at all times like a Peter with the Spiderman plushie Bruce had bought him at Christmas.

"That's a nice tattoo you've got there," he says finally, the long minutes silence stretching tensely between them finally shattered.

Bucky looks down at his good arm, to his bicep where the tattoo he got after he became a Sergeant sits, usually covered by whatever shirt he's wearing.

It's a single wing, more geometrical than accurate, done in gold and dark navy. It's small, and nondescript, not something one would notice unless- well, unless he was sat shirtless for a painting of his body in detail.

He used to have a matching one, on his other arm, but it's gone now.

"Yeah," he says, curving his neck to look at it better, unintentionally exposing the collarbone filled with scars to the sunlight streaming through the windows. "I thought about getting Stark to paint another one on my other arm, y'know, so it would match again? But I thought... Maybe I needed to let go of that, that part of my life."

He doesn't look up but he can feel Steve's eyes on him, hot as if his gaze is stripping Bucky bare.

"Don't move," he whispers, and Bucky sits in silence, his shoulders hunched and neck bent to look at his tattoo, his good hand pressed to the tabletop and his feet tangled together in front of him.

After about ten minutes, Steve tells him he can move again, make himself more comfortable. He suggests that Bucky rearrange himself every quarter hour or so, so Steve can try a few different positions and figure out what he wants to go with.

So Bucky climbs fully on the table, crouches on the balls of his feet and gazes out the window, drinking in the golden sunlight hitting the tops of the Manhattan skyline, turning the room hazy with highlighted dust notes.

After a while he positions himself so he's sat cross-legged, places his good hand palm up on his knee, and slips into the meditation routine Bruce has been teaching him.

His awareness of Steve fades into the background, the soft swishing of his pencil over the paper becoming white noise, the sound of his breathing setting a gentle rhythm, until the only thing Bucky hears is his own heartbeat.

When his eyes open, Steve is gazing at him softly. He looks as hazy as the rest of the room, and Bucky blinks slowly to clear his vision, Steve coming into focus before him.

He looks breathtakingly beautiful, Bucky thinks, still in his sleep clothes, lead from the pencils smudged on his hands, hair a mess of blonde from where he's not had time to style it, what with Bucky forcing his way into his apartment earlier. He could quite happily see Steve like this every day for the rest of his life, spend these quiet moments of warm sunlight with him.

"Bucky," he breathes, his name sounding reverent in a way Bucky's never heard before, like he means something entirely different by this one word.

It compels him to slide off the table, bare feet hitting the floor with a soft thud. He walks slowly towards Steve, who's looking a little lost, and comes to stand behind him, leaning in, partially to see his sketches better, but mostly to breathe in Steve's scent and feel the proximity of his body.

Steve must have gotten up to get paint while Bucky was lost in his meditation because the first picture he drew is pinned to the easel, the one of Bucky looking at his tattoo, and it's filled in with beautiful watercolours, big sections to the right side of the page in hues of yellow, representing the stream of sunlight through the window, tapering into browns and golds on the left side, reflecting the colour of the table. Bucky himself is highlighted in startling white where the sun hits, softening his missing arm. In contrast, his good arm is shaded in darker tones, creating a light vs dark effect that makes Bucky's throat dry up.

He looks... content, he thinks. His eyelashes are sweeping, and Steve has shaded in light shadows in the hollow of his cheekbones, collarbones, ribs. He looks fragile, but _trusting_ , almost, as if he knows he's vulnerable but doesn't mind.

His skin is done in delicate peaches, small patches of blue in the dip of his collarbone and along the veins in his arms, the curvature of his muscles. His tattoo doesn't stand out, remains in stains of soft navy and gold, almost as if Steve didn't want to make that the centre of the peice, rather wanted to capture Bucky's whole being, his bare feet looking childish and small, dangling off the tabletop.

"Steve," he whispers, swallows. "This is incredible."

Bucky's leaning in so close to Steve's neck that he can see the blush stain across his skin, a delicate pink colour that really only makes Bucky even more enamoured with him.

"You think so?" Steve's voice is as low and hushed as Bucky's, matching the quiet in the room.

"You should do this one, you should- definitely do this one. It's amazing, _Steve_."

Bucky's almost choking, a wave of intense emotion breaking over him, and it's all he can do to swallow and hold on, touch Steve lightly on the shoulders rather than dig his fingers in and leave marks, just like he's nearly desperate to do.

"Bucky," Steve breathes again. He shifts, faces Bucky, raises a hand with a faint tremor shaking through it to touch Bucky's shocked face, mouth open and eyes wide.

"Bucky," he murmurs again, before he leans in and covers Bucky's lips with his own.

The kiss is so sweet it cracks open something inside his chest, a sticky golden feeling flooding through him, running thick through his veins and mingling with his heartbeat.

He makes a small noise, and it's enough for Steve to pull him gently closer, moving around so they face each other fully without breaking the seal of their mouths, pulling at his hips like he's made of taffy, folding him into his embrace like he _belongs_ there.

"Just to make it clear," he mumbles against Steve's lips, "that thing you said about us bein' friends, last night? That no longer applies, right?"

Steve nips at his bottom lip and kisses his dumb smile away, pressing his laughter into Bucky's mouth, sharing his heady happiness in the most intimate way possible.

The sun keeps streaming through the windows, and Steve and Bucky keep kissing for the rest of the morning, stuck like two flies soaked in amber.

.

Epilogue:

Pete's third birthday is an event, one which he invites all of his friends to; Gwen chasing Harry through the kitchen with paint on her hands, Eugene climbing on the back of the sofa with Pete, Glory and Jean cheering them on, while Randy and Wade get up to some kind of mischief in the small garden outside.

Bucky smiles as he watches Peter flick his wrists inelegantly, mimicking Spiderman, and a stream of silly string comes spurting out towards Eugene. The spidey-esque wrist shooters were made by Tony, gifted unto Pete with a speech about 'great responsibility' which went completely ignored, Pete racing off to shoot at Harry's hair, making him howl loudly.

Clint is chatting animatedly to Sam about... birds or something, happily sipping from a cool beer. Nat is helping Jean make a convincing policewoman outfit so she can pretend to arrest Spiderman, played by Pete of course.

Thor is messing around with Wade and Randy in the garden, pretending to be a monster from another galaxy while they pelt fistfuls of grass at him, roaring convincingly at them and using his fingers to make small horns on his head. His girlfriend, Jane, the lady who does the Our Big Galaxy class at Pete's school, is locked in enthusiastic conversation with Tony and Bruce, nattering about something that Bucky can't make heads or tails of.

It's fresh and sunny, late February high in the air, his friends all gathered round him to celebrate the turn of another year in his son's life. Bucky stands by the fridge, covered in even more photos than ever before, and breathes it all in.

Nat comes and joins him, both of them looking fondly at the wonderful, messy people their lives have become filled with, unconsciously mirroring the first time they stood in Bucky's living room after he got back, gazing at Peter and wondering how the fuck it was gonna work out.

But work out it has.

Steve's sitting with Harry and Gwen at the kitchen table, wiping off their sticky fingers and giving them more paper to paint on, Darcy snacking on slices of apple next to him. He's smiling, eyes crinkled at the corners, the sleeves of his checkered shirt rolled up revealing his lovely arms that were holding Bucky close mere hours ago.

"I'm so glad you two finally got your shit together," Nat says absently, twirling a piece of her red hair around her finger.

Bucky looks at her in confusion. "What?"

"I mean, I had to set you up on all those crappy dates, all but shoving Steve in your direction, and it _still_ took you _forever_ to make a move."

"What the-" he yelps, "What the fuck Nat?!"

She laughs, high and clear as a bell, and pats him on the cheek before disappearing off to join Thor in the garden, where Clint and Sam have teamed up to chase the boys across the grass and pretend to try and steal their shoes.

Steve comes up beside him, wraps his arm around Bucky's waist, so he lets it go, leans into Steve's warmth and closes his eyes.

"You okay?" Steve murmurs.

"I'm just fine," he replies.

Steve hums in the back of his throat, presses a kiss to Bucky's cheek, and wanders off outside into the sunshine.

Bucky watches him go, sees him grab a beer from Clint and pat Bruce on the shoulder, laughing when Pete lets out a war cry and sprays Thor in the face with silly string.

Then he pushes off the wall and makes his way out to join him.

.

**Author's Note:**

> for those who noticed, peter is based off the idea of peter parker because i thought it'd be cute. i didn't make it too super obvious because i think sometimes fusing two 'verses together can be tacky if not done well and i don't trust myself. all of peter's friends at the end are actual characters from spiderman so that's cool  
> pete's school is a legit place in brooklyn, it's a branch off from Carmelo the Science Fellow which sounds like an awesome place for a child so check it out if you're in the area and have young children, i guess  
> i had bucky hail from indiana and grow up in virginia because that's the way it is in the comics and i wanted a legit reason for why he wouldn't have met steve already, i hope that didn't confuse too many people  
> bucky's tattoo is from the wings stitched on the side of the jacket he wears in ca:tfa (you'll see them if you look, they match the wings steve has on his helmet which is, quite frankly, adorable)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [this is not a drive by [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4335269) by [plutos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutos/pseuds/plutos), [PureHeartedTyrant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PureHeartedTyrant/pseuds/PureHeartedTyrant)




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